What is Product and Process Design?
The main focus of ME553 is to produce innovators and product design engineers using design thinking frameworks for emerging and evolving markets. Although this is a design course with a final project that culminates in a rudimentary prototype, there is no technical course content related to mechanical construction or CAD. Instead, this course focuses on the principles and frameworks used to make good products. If you are not confident with the technical side of this process, you will be placed on a team with someone who is.
Who Should Attend
“ME553 Product and Process Design” is oriented to target students from multidisciplinary backgrounds that want to add an entrepreneurial perspective to their knowledge. It provides the tools and the processes to use their technical knowledge as an advantage to detect opportunities in the market, define products/processes, and prototype them to evaluate their feasibility.
Career goals from past participants include:
Entreprenuer
Design Engineer
Product Development Engineer
UI/UX Designer
Learning Journey
In “ME 553 Product and Process Design”, you will be introduced to the powerful habit of Design Thinking that will transform the way you will develop products, services and processes. You will delve deeper into topics of product design such as Problem (opportunity) Identification & Evaluation and Concept Generalization using modern methods and strategies.
Opportunity identification
Design Thinking
Identifying Product Opportunity
Blue Ocean Strategy
Bottom of the Pyramid
Value Engineering and Analysis
visual tools for product design
Sketching and Diagramming
Storyboarding and Visual Thinking
Sketching User Experience
concept generalization & selection
Brainstorming
Play
Scamper
Morphology
Concept realization
IoT and CPS
Product Platforms & Product Architectures
Business Model
Sustainability and Circular Design
Prototyping
Course Experience
“ME 553 Product and Process Design” strays away from the traditional classroom experience, and is broken down into multiple micro-modules for consumption on the go. These micro-modules contain content and assessments, while the semester-long group project scaffolds the progress of concepts in the class as an integrated experience.
These Micro-Modules include:
VIDEO LECTURES
12 homework Assignments
7 CASE STUDY, Analysis & REVIEW SESSIONS
SEMESTER-LONG GROUP PROJECT
What Alumni Say
Mayank Kadam
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
(Ex-Audi | Daimler)
The course is a very holistic one that focuses on design thinking through not just learning but also doing. The multi-faceted approach of the course covers both technical and business aspects which immensely helped me in understanding, solving, and effectively communicating any problem at hand.
Alexa Spears
MBA Candidate
Harvard Business School
(Ex-Trane Technologies)
Purdue ME553 was a transformative experience – I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge but I also gained a robust professional network, friendships, and a community.
The technical and professional knowledge I gained in Product and Process Design was instrumental in helping me take the next step in my career.
Krutartha Jathar
Wayfair
(Ex-Chewy | JLR | Tata)
The class had a profound impact on how i think about products and services in industry as a design problem.
The frameworks and methods have become a part of my playbook at work.
Mansukh Singh
MBA Candidate
The Wharton School
(Ex-Apple | AWS | Tesla)
I have been able to use the methods of thinking and framing problems i learnt in ME553 throughout my career. It also helped me gain confidence to then pursue my MBA at Wharton.
I encourage anyone wanting to have impact in the real world to take this class. It is an eye and mind opener.
Course Evaluation Comments
I thought the lecture videos were very informative and instructional. I really liked the format and feel of each lecture video and they helped facilitate my learning especially when supplemented with the additional videos. The case studies and additional readings provided some great resources and I can see how I will use some of the lessons in the future
This is the most organized, and well thought-out course material I have seen in any of my courses. Especially in a distance-learning curriculum, the way that the course material is put together so professionally, and organized is a huge asset to the course as a whole and motivates students to dive in to learn and retain the information.
I think the video lectures, the projects, the case studies, and the supplemental videos with examples are all very valuable and contributed to a very positive course experience.
Fantastic course. I really hope Professor Ramani continues to be as engaging as he was here. He’s genuinely cares about the creativity that was brought to the table this class definitely inspires the entrepreneurial spirit of students