Interdisciplinary new product development projects extended over engineering and management courses

It is common for the university engineering students to learn each academic discipline in an independent course. By taking multiple courses during the program, they learn what are needed in their specialty in the future. In this situation, the students often have difficulty to relate the different areas they learn in the separate courses, although they are able to learn each disciplinary in depth. The students have even more challenges if they try to connect an engineering and a nonengineering courses. In this paper, how to relate an engineering and a nonengineering courses by creating projects where the students work in both of the courses is discussed. By combining the engineering and the non-engineering aspects in the projects, the students work in an environment closer to the actual new product development team. At the Department of Mechanical Precision Engineering in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, each fourth-year student group works on a new product development project in an engineering and a management courses simultaneously. Even though these courses are maintained separately, the student groups work on this single new product development project through this interdisciplinary teaching method. They apply the design skills they learn in the engineering course to develop the new product. At the same time, they apply new product development skills, which they acquire in the management course, to the same project. By extending the single project over the two courses, the students are able to see the project problems from multidisciplinary viewpoints. This project arrangement encourages the engineering students, who often do not show much interest in the management course, to concentrate on the course assignment. While the student groups work on the new product development projects, they notice the engineering and the management courses complement each other and actively participate in the project.