Regional Center for Product Lifecycle Management Education

Funder: National Science Foundation
Amount: $149,995 (MCC Share)
Funding Period: 10/1/06 – 9/30/09

The Regional Center for Product Lifecycle Management Education is a collaborative initiative between Mott Community College, Butler Community College in Andover, Pennsylvania, Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wisconsin, Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana who serves as the program manager and fiscal agent. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an emerging field experiencing rapid growth in the manufacturing industry. PLM principles and tools are used in daily practice to improve the quality of products, reduce development and delivery time, and minimize the impact on the environment, through the application of an information technology infrastructure supporting collaboration across multiple disciplines to select optimal materials and processes for manufacture, service, and recycling. PLM is a flattening and enabling technology that is required for maintaining competitiveness in a global marketplace.

The regional center’s goals are to adapt and adopt previously and yet to be developed curriculum material in PLM; develop a limited number of new curriculum modules to integrate the expertise of the partner institutions, while focusing on extensive dissemination of acquired knowledge. The Center will serve as a model for interdisciplinary work among two-and four-year educational institutions and K-12 programs in the Midwest, and expands and builds upon current PLM curriculum development projects supported by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the State of Ohio Department of Development, as well as industry consortiums. Mott Community College’s role in the Center is to develop programming for manufacturing simulation and concurrent engineering.