European Global Product Realisation

Abstract

COllaborative DEsign in Virtual Environment (CODEVE) is a teaching methodology developed within the European Global Product Realization (EGPR) course over a number of years. Today’s products are global and our students engage in their early professional practice facing challenges of working within distributed organisations to develop global products. Following early research on methods and tools in educating students for such challenges, the Global Product realisation course was initiated at the dawn of 21st Century and was performed since then as a collaboration between European Universities. Each year, an Academic Virtual Enterprise of participating Universities and an Industrial partner is formed in which students are distributed in international teams formed from multiple partner Universities. Educational activities and the project tasks are primarily communicated through video-conferencing and other synchronous and asynchronous means of communication. The design process model applied in CODEVE originates from the model of Pahl and Beitz, but is extended and adapted to suit the fuzzy front end of design projects performed in academic virtual enterprises. The extensions are related to creating a vision and implementing design research methodologies at the start of the project, blending phases of embodiment and detail design as well as bringing students for the first time in the final workshop which is aimed to culminate with the working prototype and public presentations of the products. The CODEVE methodology was tested on projects which include design of consumer products, service driven products and industrial machinery. The evaluation of the methodology was supported by the Erasmus + funded project called Networked Activities for Realization of Innovative Products (NARIP) from 2015–2017.

The CODEVE teaching methodology enables students to work on an industrial project, it encourages them to understand and explore methods from other disciplines and helps them to overcome barriers of distributed environment. Similarly, they realise that communication style, relationships with teammates, and the availability and clarity of shared information play a crucial role in the realisation of the project.

The CODEVE methodology has been implemented in academic institutions in Europe and tested in both European and transatlantic projects with Universities from Europe and America. This chapter outlines advantages and challenges in conducting this type of educational projects including the influence of the selection of product, industrial partners, marketing, implementation etc.