Integrating Sustainability as a Critical Skill in a CDIO "Product Development" Course

ABSTRACT There is a pressing need to formulate and implement engineering solutions that guarantee both environmental and social sustainability in a world facing severe challenges identified in the global agenda through the Sustainable Development Goals. Consequently, sustainability is increasingly recognized as an essential outcome in engineering curricula all over the world. Despite recent efforts to include sustainability in the scope of engineering CDIO projects, there is a lack of a common framework to consider sustainability and specific methodologies to achieve the essential integration of strategic, social and environmental issues in this type of courses. The INGENIA subjects, based on the CDIO paradigm, taught in the first year of the master in industrial engineering at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) are trying to consider systematically the different dimensions of sustainability to provide future engineers with the necessary skills to successfully incorporate sustainability in their work. This contribution presents a case study to illustrate and assess the methodology used to integrate sustainability as a critical skill in a product development CDIO course specifically. This methodology intends to incorporate environmental, social, ethical and other strategic factors related to the global sustainability of a product even before the design stage. Improvement potential from the sustainability point of view is considered as a key factor to define the prototype basic design and capabilities. Stakeholders and environmental opportunities are analysed along the market study and business plan. Later on, during the design stage environmental and social issues are included as design rules to identify optimal engineering solutions under a life cycle assessment perspective. The product development INGENIA subject has been running for three years now. In this paper we describe how the CDIO experiences have evolved and the corresponding assessment of sustainability skills of our students according to our experience. Further challenges and potential improvements are also discussed.

KEYWORDS Sustainability, CDIO product development course, Case studies & best practices, Engineering Design, Mechanical Systems, Machines Engineering.

REFERENCES Díaz Lantada, A., Lafont Morgado, P., Muñoz-Guijosa, J.M., Muñoz Sanz, J.L., Echávarri Otero, J., Muñoz García, J., Chacón Tanarro, E., De la Guerra Ochoa, E. (2013) Towards successful projectbased learning experiences in Engineering Education. Int. Journal of Eng. Education, 29(2), 476-490. Hernandez Bayo, A., Ortiz Marcos, I., Carretero Díaz, A., De la Fuente, M.M., Lumbreras Martín, J., Martínez Muneta, M.L., Riveira Rico, V., Rodríguez Hernández, M. (2014) Integral framework to drive engineering education beyond technical skills. International Journal of Engineering Education, 30(6B), 1697-1707. Lumbreras Martín, J., Moreno Romero, A., Chacón Tanarro, E., Díaz Lantada, A., García Sánchez, A., Hernández Bayo, A., García Martos, C., Márquez Sevillano, J. de J., García Ruíz, A., García Suárez, O., Rossi, C., Mínguez Torres, E. (2016). The “INGENIA” initiative for promoting CDIO at TU Madrid: lessons learned and enhanced performance. 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland. Miñano, R., Uruburu, A., Moreno-Romero, A., Lumbreras, J., Carrasco-Gallego, R., Borge, R. (2016). Designing a comprehensive methodology to integrate sustainability issues in CDIO projects. 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland. Munoz-Guijosa, J.M., Díaz Lantada, A., Chacón Tanarro, E., Echávarri Otero, J., Muñoz Sanz, J.L., Muñoz García, J. (2016). “Engineering design” course transformation: from a conceive-design towards a complete CDIO approach. 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland.

Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017