Global Product Development

ITALY, GREECE, SLOVENIA, BOSNIA, ALBANIA, CROATIA, AND MONTENEGRO

Tour countries and companies and experience engineering design in a way impossible anywhere else! During the Global Product Development course, we will increase our understanding of the important issues involved in globalization and learn how to acquire skills needed to manage product development in a global environment. This will be accomplished through study and on-site visits of companies in the US and Europe. Specific issues to be addressed include how companies manage international product development and the challenges and opportunities associated with global product development. As we travel within 7 countries and visit approximately 20 companies and organizations, we’ll explore developing product needs in unfamiliar cultures, designing for adaptability, managing distributed design teams, and manufacturing at remote and/or distributed sites. We will appreciate firsthand how global companies approach these issues and seek to understand design strategies related to concept selection, product architecture, economic modeling, CAD management, design reviews, prototyping, and manufacturing systems in a global environment. We’ll discuss and share how globalization and other design processes affect us individually and collectively as a world and explore the impacts of manufacturing capabilities and decisions in a cross-cultural team environment; we'll also learn about the nature of business, engineering, law, and other disciplines in a global economy. The course is open to all majors, but preference will be given to engineering students.

On-campus instruction will take place during the first few days of the term, followed by 14–16 days of international travel.

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