Comparing Competency Assessment in Electronics Engineering Education with and without Industry Training Partner by Challenge-Based Learning Oriented to Sustainable Development Goals

This study assessed the “creation of technological solutions for electronic devices” competencies evaluation when faculty–industry liaison is available. This experience at Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC) was developed with challenge-based learning provided by the automotive electronics industry addressing subjects oriented toward some objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Electronics Engineering faculty and project engineers from automotive electronics and instrumentation companies promote design competencies in college students. This study analyzed the competency performance and outcome results of students who took applied electronics courses for the undergraduate level under the “i-Semester with industrial partner” for one semester and compared results with students that took the course under the traditional program. The competence evaluation was classified into three preliminary domain levels: 1 or low-level, 2 or medium-level, and 3 or high-level. Students were exposed to the conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal contents applied to solve the challenge assigned by the industrial partner. Students with an industrial partner showed a higher engagement, and they were more motivated in learning the subject, compared to students having classes in the traditional way. This study showed that in developing the competency “create technological solutions for electronic devices”, 55 students with an industrial partner obtained higher domain levels than 61 students with the traditional course.

Student Research Projects With Industrial Impact

This paper describes six final year undergraduate research projects supported by a collaboration between the Whittle Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and Reaction Engines (RE), a UK aerospace company. The collaboration is now in its fourth year of projects relating to RE’s Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE). The approach taken in these projects combines modern teaching pedagogy with a best practice methodology for industrial-academic collaboration and a well established framework for structuring research problems. This paper explains how the three methodologies are tailored and adapted for use with final year undergraduate research projects. The approach is mapped on to an annual project cycle which begins with the industry and academic partners deciding which topics to investigate and proceeds through student selection, the project work itself and concludes with student assessment and end-of-year reporting. The projects combine analytical, computational and experimental work and have covered counter-rotating turbomachinery, S-ducts in compressors and Helium Turbine design, all of which are topics of primary importance to the design of SABRE. Following descriptions of each of the six completed projects, the impact of the work and lessons learned are considered from the point of view of the students, the industrial partner and the academic supervisors. Overall, the students found the work extremely engaging and have all been encouraged to pursue careers in engineering, either in industry or through post-graduate study. For the industry partner the collaboration provides expertise and an approach which is not available in-house as well providing a ‘second look’ at key technical questions. For the academics involved, the opportunity to lead research on a ‘real’ problem with an industrial partner has proved highly motivating as well as providing opportunities for personal and career development.

Condition Monitoring of Manufacturing Processes under Low Sampling Rate

Manufacturing processes can be monitored for anomalies and failures just like machines, in condition monitoring and prognostic and health management. This research takes inspiration from condition monitoring and prognostic and health management techniques to develop a method for part production process monitoring. The contribution brought by this paper is an automated technique for process monitoring that works with low sampling rates of 1/3Hz, a limitation that comes from using data provided by an industrial partner and acquired from industrial manufacturing processes. The technique uses kernel density estimation functions on machine tools spindle load historical time signals for distribution estimation. It then uses this estimation to monitor the manufacturing processes for anomalies in real time. A modified version was tested by our industrial partner on a titanium part manufacturing line.

Assigning and Scheduling Service Visits in a Mixed Urban/Rural Setting

This papera describes a maintenance scheduling application, which was developed together with an industrial partner. This is a highly combinatorial decision process, to plan and schedule the work of a group of travelling repair technicians, which perform preventive and corrective maintenance tasks at customer locations. Customers are located both in urban areas, where many customers are in close proximity, and in sparsely populated rural areas, where the travel time between customer sites is significant. To balance the workload for the agents, we must consider both the productive working time, as well as the travel between locations. As the monolithic problem formulation is unmanageable, we introduce a problem decomposition into multiple sequential steps, that is compatible with current management practice. We present and compare different models for the solution steps, and discuss results on datasets provided by the industrial partner.

Academia-industry Collaboration for Augmented Reality Application Development

Due to our previous experience in AR development, with this research project we propose to study how Augmented Reality (AR) can be adopted by an industrial partner and which are the major outcomes from which a company may benefit. For this purpose, we partnered with a forward-looking company willing to embrace the idea of implementing new technologies for industrial purposes. In this research we identified that the most significant impact which AR may have for our industrial partner is in providing remote assistance and for product exploitation and marketing purposes. For the latest we developed a customized AR application which is currently available on Apple’s App Store. By analysing the app analytics data, we found out that this application is a success in terms of marketing and not only. For the remote assistance AR app, we chose to use a commercial solution that can be adapted to fit our industrial partner’s needs. We also tested this application and found out that it greatly improves the communication between remote users thus dismissing the required assistance time.

A Systematic Approach to Model Objectives in Predevelopment Projects

This contribution presents a systematic for the elicitation of objectives and the utilization of objectives to identify reference products. The systematic is based on existing meta models. The model of objectives as proposed in this research eases decision-making and outlines the next validation activities. A key success factor is the project transferability between teams, which is often necessary in predevelopment. This is ensured through comprehensibility of objectives which benefits from the linkage between the model of objectives and the knowledge base. The proposed systematic is applied to a predevelopment project which is used as case study. In the case study it has been shown that objectives can be used to identify reference products. The approach is validated in a live-lab setting with seven engineering teams with six graduate students, two engineers of an industrial partner and a research associate. Several workshops were used to train all members of the teams in the systematic. The effects of the systematic are assessed in dedicated interviews, a survey as well as with observation of the engineering teams during milestones and engineering activities between milestones.

Using Internships to Enhance Engineering Programs – the Case Study of an Industrial Partner

Many institutions recognise the importance of internships.As part of the training of future engineers, theseopportunities confront students to the realities of jobmarket. The University studied in this case is one of thoseinstitutions. It has developed its way of integratinginternships with the engineering bachelors degree.The University in question gives high importance topractical knowledge. As third and fourth year studentscomplete their studies, they are asked to manage full-scaleprojects – from Design Brief to assembly, along withPlans and Specifications. These courses are bound to theUniversity's engineering Chair, who accompaniesstudents in their design process. All subjects come fromreal customers who either have heard of the Chair, ordiscovered it via internships. In fact, a major part of theChair's clients comes from partnerships developed insummer time, outside of the walls of the University: theconfidence and trust built in internships propel theprogram. Recently, this symbiosis was brought up to anew level