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Abstract
A freshman engineering course taught by experienced faculty members can attract students to the challenges and demands of career as modern manufacturing engineers. The article illustrates this general approach with the specific details for one successful, inexpensive, challenging but "fun" project. Students work within a multi-disciplinary team to design, produce and test a production aircraft that meets statistical quality control performance goals set by the customer. The team optimizes the manufacturing floor to minimize variable and fixed costs using the basic skills provided in the introductory lectures and laboratories. The project includes an executive summary, a preliminary report, a performance trial of the aircraft, a final report, detailed drawings and a capstone team presentation. Teamwork is demanded of all participants at all levels.
Keywords: Line Balancing, Engineering Economics, Taguchi Quality Control, Work Study, CAD, Work in Progress (WIP).
Background
During the 1990s, many engineering colleges felt that a freshman-level engineering course within the university was needed as a counterbalance to the required freshman coursework typical during the first 18 months of many four-year institutions. Statistics on the pre-engineering students indicated that students were deciding that they did not want to be engineers without ever having taken a course that was well grounded in engineering principles.
The Auburn University engineering faculty designed a freshman-level course that was challenging and with an emphasis on teamwork and fundamental engineering software skills. Each department within the college of engineering offers a version of the course within its curriculum, although attendance within the department for which a student has declared is not mandatory. Consequently, the Introduction to Engineering courses are typically multidisciplinary due to the diversity of student majors enrolled in each class.
Each department's course is required to emphasize commonly used engineering and management software that the students will find useful throughout their college education and early professional careers. All versions of the course utilize:
* Microsoft® Excel Analysis Package
* Microsoft® Word with Equation Editor
* Microsoft® PowerPoint® with add-ins
* Solid Edge® CAD Software
* MATLAB®
Each course consists of one hour of lecture and three hours of computer laboratory time using the software listed above. Each department's instructor is free to develop a team-based project using these tools and other supplemental software chosen...