Building Together

To most of us those little boxes that hold compact discs are either a handy convenience or a necessary evil. But to Rod Kerezsi '95, they were a problem to be solved, a way to release his creative energy and build something that would showcase his promise as a mechanical engineer.

In the Integrated Product Development class that Kerezsi took in his senior year, he suggested that his team work on a spring-loaded CD design in which the CD, with just a little finger pressure, would pop out of its case.

Kerezsi led a team that included other engineers and some business majors. They fashioned a case with a slot into which a CD would slide out, then would slide back in and click into place. The prototype worked, but the business minds on the team determined that it was too expensive to manufacture.

Professor John Ochs suggested a new project, designing a case for mini-CDs, a market that has yet to take off. With a new direction, the balance of power on the team shifted slightly as Kerezsi became a team member and others took the lead.

But his initial burst of enthusiasm was only slightly blunted. As he learned about market research, competitive benchmarking, and financial models, not to mention group dynamics and communications, Kerezsi realized the value of what was taking place.

"We had six cooks in the kitchen," he says of the student team, "and we all had an attitude that we could do it ourselves. It wasn't easy to understand who was supposed to do what, but we learned through communication."

Sound like life on the job? It's supposed to.The Integrated Product Development (IPD) program is a prototype for a new breed of learning experience that takes students out of the neat assumptions of their disciplines and into the messy world of making things. IPD forces engineers to look at how a product's design affects costs, and makes marketers understand which end of a screwdriver to use.

Employers today expect new hires to work in that kind of environment. They expect graduates to be knowledgeable in their fields. To have integrity. Be able communicators. Critical and holistic thinkers. Team players. Well-versed in the fundamentals of free enterprise. Skilled at dealing with change and global diversity. Grounded in technology.

And able to leap the boundaries of their own disciplines- in a single bound. Such leaps are what the IPD program is all about. For if technical skills were what the market demanded in the 1980s, "softer" skills are driving the market in this decade, says President Peter Likins. "Technical skills are not enough."

Red Poling, former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co., says Lehigh's IPD program "is a positive move in the direction of increased interaction between academia and business." Poling, chairman of the Business-Higher Education Forum, feels, as do many executives, that colleges and universities are about five years behind changes in industry.

Poling and his forum colleagues, including Likins, are conducting a two-year study of the demands of the workplace of the future, and so far have found that graduates often lack the very skills the IPD program develops.

"IPD is liberal arts for the 21st century," says Jim Schmotter, dean of the College of Business and Economics. He believes a strong liberal education is more important than ever, but it's not enough. "Graduates need to understand technology and how the free enterprise system works and they need to be able to communicate even more effectively than ever because they will not find themselves in a structured corporate hierarchy."

To John Ochs, professor of mechanical engineering, the IPD program not only teaches students these "soft" skills, it does something else engineering schools have been neglecting in recent years- actually building things.

"Students coming out of high schools these days are great on computers, but they don't know which end of a screwdriver to hold," Ochs says. "I tell parents that if you deal in virtual reality, you're going to deal in virtual money. We have to use information technology to build products. In IPD, our students are doing that."

The program's roots reach back to 1990, when the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), which evaluates engineering education nationwide, began pressing for industrial design throughout the engineering curriculum. Bob Wei, professor and chair of mechanical engineering, and his colleagues were already involving their students in design projects, but they knew from talking to ABET and industry contacts that engineering students need to develop business acumen and broaden their understanding of social issues.

At the same time, the business college was well aware that business students needed to appreciate the process of technological innovation, and began to incorporate more technology and basic science into its curriculum. The two colleges teamed in 1991 to apply for funding from the National Science Foundation. They failed to get funding, but pushed forward with IPD. Finally approved in 1994, the program today is required of all engineering students and is optional for business and art and architecture students, with more than 200 students and 25 faculty in the three undergraduate colleges are involved in IPD program.

There is a freshman "reverse engineering" course, in which students from all three colleges rip apart Coke cans and other everyday products and ask questions like "why is it designed this way from the perspective of manufacturing? marketing? ergonomics? materials?" And "what do the various parts of the product and various parts of the company do?"

Students pursue their own disciplines for the next two years, then come together for a two-semester "capstone" product development projects.

Monica Devine, a senior in accounting, and her team are in the middle of designing an all-aluminum truck bed for Alcoa.

"As students, we've been accustomed to giving answers to questions on exams," she says. "In IPD, we are working on a project that has no specific answers. For example, we weren't told whether Alcoa wanted to design this truck bed and build it, or provide the concept and raw material to another manufacturer to build."

Her team decided it would be more profitable for Alcoa to manufacture and market the truck bed. Interestingly, another team with the identical project has reached a different conclusion. Both teams, along with 18 other teams in this year's program, will present finished prototypes at the end of the coming fall semester.

That's education that students couldn't get a decade ago. Todd Watkins, an economics professor who is part of the IPD teaching team, was an engineering major who worked at Eastman Kodak developing a better flash system for its disk camera. Had he been in an undergraduate program like IPD, he says, he would have looked at his job a lot differently.

"I wanted to develop the best flash system possible," he says, "I wasn't worried about what it would cost or whether the customer even cared about how much light there is in the corner of a photo. Had I worked side-by-side with Kodak's business people, I would have had a better feel for financial constraints."

The experience of working on a team with specialists in many functions fills in some of the holes that some say weaken engineering education. Norman R. Augustine, president and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation and chairman of the National Academy of Engineering, recently spoke to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which evaluates engineering education in the U.S. He said students should still study science and engineering, but they also needed to learn economics, history, political science, law and liberal arts. He said they should study abroad and should work in interdisciplinary teams on hands-on industry projects.

Harvey Stenger, dean of Lehigh's College of Engineering and Applied Science, says employers are noticing a difference in IPD graduates. He cites this quote from an internal Allied Signal memo:

"Each Lehigh student was exceptional. They were by far the best group of students from the targeted schools we recruited this fall. The Lehigh students displayed the most maturity, confidence, technical ability and leadership ability as compared to the other groups... the revised curriculum at the school emphasizes developing not only technical ability but also team-building and leadership skills necessary in today's business environment...the new courses have definitely paid off... this school should be watched closely and Allied should foster a closer relationship with it in order to capture the gems that this school produces."

The original partnerships between engineering and business are being broadened with the addition of humanities majors. Inclusion of arts and sciences students in IPD has begun with freshmen from art and architecture. By 2000, the goal is to have all engineering, business and art and architecture students involved. A master's in industrial design is a possibility.

IPD can't arrive too soon for Berrisford Boothe, assistant professor of art and architecture. He tells the story of a Venetian computer scientist who has catalogued and prioritized on computer all 3,000 pieces of deteriorating public art in Venice, including each piece's dimensions, material components, condition and historical and popular signficance, as well as architect's fees, city taxes and actual restoration costs.

"That project involves art history, computer science, structural engineering, architecture, chemical engineering, marketing, materials science and engineering and many other disciplines," he says. "Solving problems requires the same kind of integrative thinking for an arts and science major as an engineering major. Every arts and science major should understand technology and every engineering major should understand the aesthetic and creative possibilities dormant in each design problem."

"The IPD program reinforces what we in the College of Arts and Sciences have practiced for years through our various interdisciplinary programs," says Joan Straumanis, dean of the college. "I am certain we will see gradual dissolution of the hard lines between the 'disciplines' and more and more disciplined interaction of the fields of knowledge. We impatiently await the time when more of our college's faculty and students have the opportunity to participate in IPD problem-solving teams. They need us and we need them!"

Lehigh's Small Business Development Center, Management of Technology program, Center for Innovation Management Studies, Ben Franklin Technology Center, Manufacturing Resources Center and Lehigh Management Assistance Council (LUMAC) provide most of the industry sponsors for the IPD program. But more project sponsors are needed, and they don't have to be product development projects. They can be virtually any effort that requires the collaboration of disciplines.

Four years ago, the Ben Franklin center brought together John Ochs and Rich Roland, president of Neo Products Inc., Warminster, Pa., and a model sponsor-partnership was created. Roland's company funded two teams of engineering and business students this past year to design a prototype electric violin. In a pilot course this summer co-taught by Roland, Ochs, Watkins and Boothe, a dozen students from business, engineering, art and architecture and theatre design are taking the project to the next step by making the mold for the violin.

"I told them this mold has to be perfect, and if it isn't, they will have to do it over again," says Roland, who is an artist, industrial designer and business owner. "I could see the shock in their eyes, but at the same time, they still had an air of confidence about meeting this challenge."

Like the confidence exuded by Heather Beam, a 1996 mechanical engineering graduate who worked on one of the Neo Products teams. She and Professor Watkins spoke about IPD at the winter meeting of the Business Higher Education Forum in California. Facing a roomful of corporate and academic chief executives, Beam simply "looked past their titles" and calmly delivered her presentation.

Or that of Jennifer Kline, '95, who as a management major worked on the violin project and now works as an associate of consulting services for Princeton Management Resources, Princteon, N.J. "The neat thing was we were leading each other with our skills," Kline says. "The engineering students' technical skills were impressive, but they respected me for my market research and presentation skills."

That confidence and mutual respect was enough to move Kerezsi to call Professor Ochs recently and offer to identify an IPD project his company could sponsor. "It was such a good experience, I wanted to give something back," he says.