More than Professional Competence –The Karlsruhe Education

The development of products is one of the most complex and important stages in the value creation chain. Besides professional competence and competence in methods, key abilities like social competence, the capability to make decisions and realize them are essential for future engineers to launch successful products in the market. The basis for the Karlsruhe Education Model for Product Development (KaLeP), started in 1999, is the above mentioned holistic understanding of product development.

For an education oriented on the demand of later professionals the courses are divided into three parts: the theoretical knowledge is imparted in lectures, in tutorials where the students train the practical appliance and implement it in a workshop with a complex project work. The courses are embedded in a realistic and industry-near development environment and in addition to the professional competence, method and process knowledge is taught in different competence fields.

The KaLep is part of an integrated education which is closely associated with materials science, manufacturing technology, engineering mechanics, etc. To ensure a methodical row the KaLep is separated into three education phases which are characterized through different fields of product development-specific knowledge: systems, methods and processes.

The first phase consists of the courses “Mechanical Design I, II and III”. Its focus is set on technical systems in product development. The students learn basic considerations of complex machine elements by means of the Element Model C&CM (Contact & Channel Model), process steps of product design, teamwork and elaboration capability as well as design and dimensioning regulations supported by engineering-specific software. In the second phase, in the course “Product Design”, students learn the basics of development structures und development processes in mechanical engineering and the appliance of product-neutral methods for support. In the third phase knowledge is deepened in the course “Integrated Product Development”, the core of the KaLep. In the lecture students are taught the field of product development processes in enterprises. Systematic planning, controlling and regulation of the development- and innovation process, the appliance of effective methods, strategy and team management are the main tees of this phase. The whole process is connected to a product development project with an industrial partner which generates a competition character between the student teams.

For gaining very important international experiences the students have the possibility to attend exchange programs with Purdue-University (Indiana) in the USA and Shanghai in China within the Global Engineering Alliance for Research and Education (GEARE).

2nd International CDIO Conference, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden, 13 to 14 June 2006