penn s tate © geo kremer penn s tate developing innovation ksas in engineering education settings:...

PENNSTATE © GEO KREMERPENNSTATE

Developing Innovation KSAs in Engineering Education Settings:

Needs, Challenges and Opportunities

Developing Innovation KSAs in Engineering Education Settings:

Needs, Challenges and Opportunities

T. W. SIMPSON© GEO KREMER

Gül E. Kremer

Fulbright Scholar, 2010

Associate Professor of Engineering Design & Industrial Engineering

The Pennsylvania State University

PENNSTATE © GEO KREMER

OutlineOutline

• Need for Innovation

• Knowledge, Skills & Abilities (KSAs) for Innovation

• Challenges of the Engineering Education Settings for

Innovation KSAs Attainment

• Opportunities Systematic Ideation Methods Multidisciplinary Engineering Education Reversing the Disconnect with the Arts


Need for InnovationNeed for Innovation

• Innovation is now recognized as “the single most important ingredient in any modern economy”; unfortunately, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke recently declared that our nation’s innovation system is “broken”, adding that “the United States has not adjusted to a new global marketplace where foreign countries and foreign companies have the ability to outpace their American counterparts”.

• Global competition is redefining the process of innovation.



• Necessity is the mother of invention. Indeed, we all can relate to this. In search for the corollary of “necessity” for innovation, I hypothesize that labor market dynamics, which impact the location and longevity of profitable supply chains, might be this necessity.

This hypothesis is grounded in two observations: (1) Longevity of a profitable (global) supply chain depends on

the availability of the qualified labor force at a low cost on the supplier side, and

(2) The increasing labor cost on the OEM side makes the supply chain global, and the OEM more innovative (technology based innovations with implications on product and process designs).



• Indeed, a quick analysis of the labor cost statistics and the innovation index reveals a very high correlation: 0.894.

Countries Innovation Index (2007)* labor cost (2007)**

Austria 0.48 € 28.50Belgium 0.47 € 33.10Bulgaria 0.23 € 2.10Denmark 0.61 € 35.00Finland 0.64 € 28.30France 0.47 € 31.90Germany 0.59 € 29.10Ireland 0.49 € 25.50Italy 0.33 € 24.50Luxembourg 0.53 € 32.70Netherlands 0.48 € 29.29Poland 0.24 € 6.70Romania 0.18 € 3.90Spain 0.31 € 18.30Sweden 0.73 € 33.40Turkey 0.08 € 1.50UK 0.57 € 27.90*Source: Competitive Analysis of Innovation Performance Feb 2008** Source: Spiegel Online International April 22 2008


Knowledge, Skills & Abilities (KSAs) for InnovationKnowledge, Skills & Abilities (KSAs) for Innovation

• In the face of grand challenges for engineering, several efforts have been undertaken to identify the vision for what we should expect from our undergraduate engineering students.



• One of the significant reports indicates that our graduates should aspire: “to have

the ingenuity of Lillian Gilbreth, the problem-solving capabilities of Gordon Moore, the scientific insight of Albert Einstein, the creativity of Pablo Picasso, the determination of the Wright brothers, the leadership abilities of Bill Gates, the conscience of Eleanor Roosevelt, the vision of Martin Luther King, and the curiosity and wonder of our grandchildren.”

The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century, National Academy of Engineering, ISBN-13: 978-0-309-09162-6, 2004.



• Domain Specific Knowledge• Breadth of Knowledge• Domain Specific Skills• Conceptual “Front-End”

Design Skills• Preliminary Design Skills• Detailed

Design/Implementation Skills

• Teamwork Skills

• Open Personality• Confident Personality• “Unsatisfied” Personality• Intrinsic Motivation• Dominant Personality• Emotional Intelligence• Cognitive Ability• “Thick Skinned” Personality• Divergent Thinking Ability• Analogical Ability• Associational Ability



“Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

The Creativity Crises, Bronson, P. and Merryman, A. Newsweek, July 10, 2010.


Innovation in the Engineering Education SettingInnovation in the Engineering Education Setting

“I wish I could say that these educational areas [science and engineering] also have, as a main purpose, the stimulation of your creativity, and that they succeed in doing it. I am afraid that neither is true. In fact, I suspect that the taking of a degree in engineering or science may, in many cases, do more to stifle creativity than to stimulate it.”

A.D. Moore, Invention, Discovery, and Creativity, Anchor Books, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969



Overall, how much have the courses you’ve taken in your engineering program emphasized each of the following:



Perceptions of Emphasis on Creativity & Innovation

1

2

3

4

5

Bio

Chem

Civil

Electri

cal

Gener

al

Indu

stria

l

Mec

hanic

al

Students

Faculty

Program Chairs



• Prototype to Production (P2P): This three-year (2006-09), NSF funded study assesses the alignment between undergraduate engineering program goals, curricula, and instruction and the goals of the National Academy of Engineering’s recent report entitled, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. The "P2P" study investigates the educational experiences of undergraduates in two- and four-year colleges, examining how diverse students (women, low-income, and historically underrepresented students) experience their engineering programs and perceive the engineering profession.

• Prototyping the Engineer of 2020 (P360): Whereas the P2P study asks, “What is the current state of engineering education in America vis-à-vis the engineer of 2020?,” the Prototyping (“P360”) study seeks to answer the question, “What could be?” by focusing on programs that have demonstrated that they are already preparing students effectively. P360 will identify six engineering schools that are already supporting high-quality, innovative, undergraduate programs.

http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/e2020


Systematic Ideation MethodsSystematic Ideation Methods

• Inventive principles can be applied to all other areas of technology, greatly reducing time to produce breakthrough ideas and inventions.

• Does the problem, process, or product appear to have an irresolvable contradiction in its design or operation?

• Chances are that this same contradiction has been faced—and solved before—by people in other industries or technologies.

TRIZ inventive principles and historical study of great inventions teach us that direct confrontation and resolution of contradictions are keys to breakthrough inventions and ideas.

Genrich Saulovich AltshullerFather of

TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch )



1. Weight of moving object 2. Weight of nonmoving object 3. Length of moving object 4. Length of nonmoving object 5. Area of moving object 6. Area of nonmoving object 7. Volume of moving object 8. Volume of nonmoving object 9. Speed10. Force 11. Tension, pressure 12. Shape 13. Stability of object 14. Strength 15. Durability of moving object 16. Durability of nonmoving object17. Temperature18. Illumination intensity19. Energy spent by moving object

20. Energy spent by nonmoving object 21. Power 22. Waste of energy 23. Waste of substance 24. Loss of information 25. Waste of time 26. Amount of substance 27. Reliability28. Accuracy of measurement 29. Accuracy of manufacturing 30. Harmful factors acting on object 31. Harmful side effects 32. Manufacturability 33. Convenience of use 34. Reparability 35. Adaptability 36. Complexity of device 37. Complexity of control 38. Level of automation 39. Productivity


Multidisciplinary Engineering EducationMultidisciplinary Engineering Education

1. The pace of technological innovation will continue to be rapid (most likely accelerating).

2. The world in which technology will be deployed will be intensely globally interconnected.

3. The population of individuals who are involved with or affected by technology (e.g., designers, manufacturers, distributors, users) will be increasingly diverse and multidisciplinary.

4. Social, cultural, political, and economic forces will continue to shape and affect the success of technological innovation.

5. The presence of technology in our everyday lives will be seamless, transparent, and more significant than ever.

The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century, National Academy of Engineering, ISBN-13: 978-0-309-09162-6, 2004.


Reversing the Disconnect with the ArtsReversing the Disconnect with the Arts

• `..to map out in the mind; plan; invent'• `..the process of conceiving or inventing ideas [...]

and communicating those ideas to others.' Bertoline and Wiebe (2002)



Mask from the Dogon peoples of Mali– representing the ancient ancestress named Yasigi



• Technical design can further be sub-divided into two broad categories:Industrial Design - concentrates on the aesthetics

(appearance) and the ergonomics (human factors) associated with the product or process.

Engineering Design - focuses on the technology innovation behind the product or process.



• Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.

J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man


Contact Information:

Gül E. Kremer

[email protected] 353 402 3628

[email protected] 1 814 863 1530

Associate Professor of Engineering Design & Industrial Engineering

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16803

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