It is common for products to be designed at one location and manufactured at another location(s). Hence, systems to ensure efficient communications between the design and the manufacturing facilities are required. In order to allow students to study the problems associated with this issue, a linkage between the engineering/ manufacturing facilities of Oakland University's School of Engineering and Computer Science and the industrial technology facilities of Seaholm High School in Birmingham, MI is proposed. The facility linking these sites will be called the Remote Design/Manufacturing Laboratories. The proposed Remote DesignlManufacturing laboratories will serve as the conduit in which Oakland University engineering and computer science students using Oakland's CIM and AIM laboratories can work with Seaholm High School students using their technology facilities. Oakland students will be responsible for the engineering design and development of products as well as automated manufacturing systems. The Seaholm students will be responsible for technical design issues as well as constructing the products and manufacturing systems in Seaholm's technology facilities. Projects to be conducted in the proposed laboratories will be team-based, both university and high school students will be assigned to each team. The projects will emphasize two key factors that differ from most current team-based projects conducted in university engineering/computer science or high school technology programs. The first is that the teams will contain members with varying levels of education, experience and job descriptions. The second major difference is that team members will be located at different facilities with most interactions occurring using the proposed laboratories.
