An Approach To Foster Integrative Skills During The Engineering Studies

This paper presents an approach to overcome the drawbacks associated with education programs developed on the basis of domain-specific knowledge only. The approach is based on establishment of means for cross-disciplinary meetings and collaboration between students on Master programs in product development and production management. The approach is intended to help reducing the barriers to integration among individuals possessing different competences that have been reported in the literature. The approach originates from discussions regarding two Master programs at the School of Engineering (JTH), Jönköping University, Sweden. The programs are: Master in Product Development, specialisation in Product Development and Materials Engineering and Production Systems, specialisation in Production Development and Management. Both programs are designed according to the principles of the CDIO initiative. The approach was developed jointly by the two Master program coordinators during a workshop at Stanford University on ‘Changing mindsets: Improving creativity and innovation’ in December 2010. The workshop was organised by the Swedish program ‘Product Innovation Engineering program’ (PIEp). The approach emerged during the workshop and was modelled as a physical prototype and discussed with other workshop participants. The result was three courses found to be suitable for joint studies.