This Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory at Wayne State University is realizing a collaborative e-learning laboratory for sustainable design and manufacturing?a Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory?for conveying sustainability principles in the context of product architectural design, manufacturing, assembly, and supply chain decisions across a spectrum of active learners (i.e., K-12, university, and practitioners).
Intellectual Merit : This collaboratory is creative and original because it will result in a holistic and broadly useable tool that will support cyber-based conceptual product design by integrating existing research in the following areas: distributed decision support, semantic assembly design, product architecture optimization, assembly and process analysis, supply chain configuration, life cycle assessment, and manufacturing education innovation, to address the needs across a spectrum of learners (K-12 students, engineering students, and practitioners). The project is delivering four outcomes.
Outcome one: A user friendly and license-free web-based tool and interactive e-learning platform to educate users in sustainable design and manufacturing. This collaboratory is demonstrating the effects of different product designs on supply chain costs and environmental impacts with learner friendly examples (i.e., three ring binder, backpack, electric toothbrush, and bicycle). Researchers are overcoming limitations of the existing state of the art, which include a lack of scalable tools/technologies that can capture interdependencies between product design architecture and life cycle process requirements at all phases of product development, and the complexity of jointly improving the product and processes through flexible, representative models and algorithms.
Outcome two: Secondary and post-secondary educational materials that provide hands-on, project-based activities in interaction with the Collaboratory.
Outcome three: Evaluation tools to assess the educational impacts and competency of the Collaboratory in educating students about cyberinfrastructure, including assessment of students at the participating high school and universities and user adoption of the cyber-platform. To date, there has been a significant level of grassroots activities for sustainable design and manufacturing. However, engineering programs and manufacturing companies continue to struggle with methods to educate engineers in holistic product and process development with a view of life cycle costs and environmental effects.
Outcome four: This research will engage high-school students and underrepresented college populations to promote a diverse cyber-ready workforce. Under the cyber-learner paradigm, users are experiencing and undertaking sustainable product design with consideration of product, process, and supply chain impacts facilitated by product architecture and environmental performance knowledge sets.
Broader Impacts : The proposed work directly responds to the needs for a cyber-enabled workforce and sustainable engineering education by increasing awareness of product and environmental sustainability through cyber-based product design. Sustainability-related research has been shown to disproportionately attract students to STEM disciplines from underrepresented groups, and will broaden their involvement in next generation engineering education and research. To increase workforce preparedness for design and environmental sustainability, the Collaboratory is supporting the development of products and related supply chains for increased performance, reduced costs, and reduced environmental impacts (e.g., carbon footprint). Indeed, the trend towards outsourcing will lead to growth of the global carbon footprint, even without accounting for associated transportation, due to less efficient energy generation and manufacturing processes. The Collaboratory is directly supporting the product manufacturing industry by educating engineers about sustainable design through accessible cyber-based tools. These tools will help maintain the U.S. industry?s competitive edge by enhancing productivity, and quality and sustainability of mechanical products. Given the underrepresented student populations at participating universities, and in particular Wayne State in Detroit, the project will support societal educational needs by involving women and minority high school and university students in research and field studies. Successful implementation of the project will help to develop, at a modest cost, new pedagogy for academic institutions to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula, and prepare a skilled workforce that meets the needs of modern industry for sustainable product development. The proposed integrated learning environment will also advance high school students? multi-step problem solving skills through tangible, realistic examples. Finally, the project will enhance research and education infrastructure by extending the effects of previous research findings and by forming the basis for collaboration on other research and education projects.
This CI-TEAM Demonstration Project was undertaken at Wayne State University, Oregon State University, and The Pennsylvania State University to realize a collaborative e-learning laboratory for sustainable design and manufacturing - a Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory - for conveying sustainability principles in the context of product architectural design, manufacturing, assembly, and supply chain decisions across a spectrum of active learners. Intellectual Merit: The developed Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory is creative and original since it provides a holistic and broadly useable tool that supports cyber-based conceptual product design by integrating existing research in the following areas of focus: product design, manufacturing analysis, supply chain configuration, and life cycle assessment to address needs across a spectrum of learners. This Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory is enabled by user-friendly, license-free web-based tools. The specific goals of this CI-TEAM project included: 1) deploying a Collaboratory that includes modules to support conceptual design variant generation, life cycle cost and environmental analysis, and supply chain optimization; 2) developing and disseminating educational materials that can provide hands-on activities (or project-based activities) in support of interaction with the Collaboratory; 3) assessing the educational effects, or more specifically, the cyberinfrastructure competency gained through interaction with the Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory, including assessment of activities at the participating universities and user adoption of the cyber-platform; and 4) engaging underrepresented groups and high-school students to promote a diverse workforce that is ready to exploit cyberinfrastructure tools. In this CI-TEAM Demonstration project, learning modules have been developed to demonstrate the effects of different product designs on supply chain costs and environmental impacts by using the Sustainable Product Development Collaboratory, which is comprised of several web application technologies. The Collaboratory framework consists of three main modules: a design module, a manufacturing analysis module, and a supply chain analysis module. The design platform, which uses Google SketchUp, a freely available 3D modeling tool, communicates with a web-based design/analysis interface, called the "Collaboratory Portal." The manufacturing and supply chain analysis solvers are stored on a central server along with the Collaboratory Portal. With the design and manufacturing/supply chain analysis functionalities thus available in the Collaboratory, learning modules can be constructed for use in the classroom at multiple complexity and comprehensiveness levels to educate a wide spectrum of learners about the concepts and practice of sustainable product development. In this demonstration project, Collaboratory development was focused on designing a bicycle pedal by considering sustainability principles in design, manufacturing, and supply chain activities. The analysis of adverse environmental impacts when done separately across the supply chain nodes (design, component manufacturing, assembly, logistics, etc.) overlooks the potential gains from a more holistic approach. In this project, environmental impact has been captured in terms of energy consumption and carbon footprint. Overall, a holistic vision for a framework to integrate design, manufacturing and supply chain processes for a more comprehensive sustainability analysis was presented with the Collaboratory. Broader Impacts: This project directly responds to the needs for a cyber-enabled workforce and sustainable engineering education by increasing awareness of product and environmental sustainability through cyber-based product design. Sustainability-related research has been shown to disproportionately attract students to STEM disciplines from underrepresented groups, and will broaden their involvement in next generation engineering education and research. To increase workforce preparedness for design and environmental sustainability, the Collaboratory supports the development of products and related supply chains for increased performance, reduced costs, and reduced environmental impacts (e.g., carbon footprint). Indeed, the trend towards outsourcing will lead to growth of the global carbon footprint, even without accounting for associated transportation, due to less efficient energy generation and manufacturing processes. The developed Collaboratory can directly support product manufacturing industry by educating engineers about sustainable design through accessible cyber-enabled tools. These tools help maintain the U.S. industry’s competitive edge by enhancing productivity, quality, and sustainability of mechanical products. The developed learning modules will help to develop, at a modest cost, new pedagogy for academic institutions to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula, and prepare a skilled workforce that meets the needs of modern industry for sustainable product development. The proposed integrated learning environment will advance high school students’ multi-step problem solving skills through tangible, realistic examples. The Collaboratory concept was introduced to university students in several intuitions in the U.S. and Europe and middle and high school teachers. Of note, the high and middle school teachers agreed that the presented concept will support their teaching curriculum on "understanding how an end product was realized and delivered to consumers" by design exercises with cyber-enabled education tools. A European Erasmus Intensive Training Program on Sustainability Management and Technology also provided a knowledge sharing opportunity to stimulate solutions and innovative ideas in sustainable design and education by introducing the Collaboratory.
