A new perspective to design education in industrial engineering: Product design projects for freshman

This paper describes an introductory project-based engineering design course for the industrial engineering freshman students. An innovative approach is preferred in this course and students in the form of design teams are required to design and construct working prototypes for predefined ‘physical products’. This course brings a new perspective to the industrial engineering education, which is mainly focused on designing ‘systems’ rather than ‘physical products’. It is argued that this ‘product design’ experience improves understanding of the industrial engineering students ‘systems approach’ at an early level and provides students with a strong foundation on designing systems in the future.