High-Tech Product Design and Rapid Manufacturing

This is a "manufacturing survey course" that deals with all aspects of the manufacturing processes relevant to today's production of consumer electronics or electro-mechanical devices. It also aims to provide a balanced view for the "Management of Technology". The course guides students through a product development cycle, and emphasizes modern Internet-based commercial activities between designers, rapid prototyping services and full-scale manufacturers.

In this course we will cover product concept, consumer ethnography, marketing, product design, modeling, rapid prototyping and ending in the final project Tradeshow. The class features guest speakers. An especially valuable way of dealing with this material has been a semester-long class project. This places significant emphasis on group interactions. Students will design and prototype a new consumer electronic product based on RFIDs. Some connections to the Mica Mote (and TinyOS) used in previous Tradeshows may also arise.

Finding a useful (and commercially viable) application for the RFIDs, creating a functional package/enclosure, and giving a demonstration of its use, are key to the course. Development of a "marketing plan" and a "ramp-up to manufacturing" scenario is a vital part of the course.

See the MOT site for details.