Case study based education in Product Lifecycle Management

The paper introduces a new concept for the design of case study based courses in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) education using the example of a successfully implemented PLM course module. The concept has been developed together with Continental AG and ILC PROSTEP GmbH. The major results of the joint project is a model of a product engineering project including several case studies originating from reference processes created by the synthesis of public sources and real processes analyzed in industrial context. As validation of the educational concept, results observed and surveyed during our PLM course are given. During this course the students cooperated in several process oriented case studies in order to design and change the "VPE-product" and to manage the respective data. PLM and IT-tool knowledge can therefore be acquired by experiencing the relevant business processes.