Introduction to Manufacturing Engineering

Catalog description

This course serves a societal need for educating engineers about intelligent, sustainable, human centric, and resilient manufacturing, comprising our current industrial revolutions, Industries 4.0 and 5.0. Manufacturing is essential to our economy as the primary way of creating value in industrialized societies. Earlier industrial revolutions created environmental, social, and health issues along with wealth. Sustainable manufacturing is essential to the survival of our planet. Manufacturing realizes the value created by product design engineers. In addition to production, an understanding of manufacturing engineering enables superior product design. Furthermore, principles from manufacturing engineering can be applied to advantage in a wide variety of fields, like healthcare, education, construction, service industries, sports, and management. Historical foundations for current manufacturing engineering are established and connected to digital technologies, cyber physical production systems, and collaborative robots. Students are introduced to Suh’s axiomatic design, a systematic design method based on a scientific theory, which can be applied to solving all kinds of engineering design problems. Students learn how to apply design theory and AI to solve manufacturing related design problems. Students learn ethical design methods for value production and cost management. Through lectures, quizzes, homework, and in-class exercises students learn fundamental conceptual frameworks that can be adapted and applied as artificial intelligence, technologies, needs, and methods develop throughout their careers. Students cannot receive credit for both ME281x and ME2810. Recommended Background: none