Development of hands-on laboratory resources for manufacturing engineering

Increasing student enrollments with a demand on instructional resources poses significant challenges when attempting to meet the goal of hands-on experiences in a manufacturing engineering curriculum. The modern manufacturing engineer requires a spectrum of skills and knowledge in materials, manufacturing processes, production engineering, systems, and manufacturing operations used on the plant floor for industry to maintain competitiveness. While much of this knowledge is gained through experience, a strong foundation enables the early career manufacturing engineer to more rapidly gain knowledge and hit the floor running. Handson experiences during the training of manufacturing engineers is invaluable to the foundation of manufacturing knowledge. The strategy to accomplish the goal of providing abundant experiential hands-on laboratories with the necessary physical equipment for courses in a manufacturing engineering curriculum is described in this paper. c American Society for Engineering Education, 2017.