Transatlantic Course on 24/7 Collaborative Engineering and Product Data Management

This paper describes a new course on 24/7 collaborative engineering and product data management. A key element of this course is to use state-of-the-art hardware and software technologies to deliver live, transatlantic, team-taught joint lectures, and to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous student design collaboration with colleagues overseas: Unigraphics is used for CAD/CAM/CAE; Teamcenter Engineering is used for PDM; Teamcenter Community is used for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration; and Centra and high-end video conferencing equipment is used for delivering live lectures and for team meetings. The students work in four-person teams, with each team consisting of two US and two German students, that, as a class, model and redesign parts of a production vehicle using data that has been provided by an industry partner.