Ambitious Program Teaches Students to Take Products From Art to Part

The Integrated Product Development (IPD) program at Lehigh University (Allentown, PA) - launched in 1995 - is a "cross-pollination" program combining the talents of students from Lehigh's business, design and engineering schools to complete selected new product development projects for some of the biggest corporations in the country. These companies provide $10,000 in grant money for materials and any expenses the students may incur, and in return they get a team of Lehigh students managing the entire project from design and development to marketing.

The 160 students enrolled in IPD meet once weekly for a lecture that includes topics such as best practices, project management, business plan development and cash flow analysis. Teams then conduct project meetings during the week. The team focuses on everything from business and technical feasibility to ergonomics and aesthetics. The sound reasoning behind this is that the instructors found that the business students didn't have any concept of the engineering problem-solving process and that the engineering students did not have the concept of viability in the marketplace and, while design arts students provide the look and feel for the products, to be effective they need to be well versed in both business and engineering issues. The thing that really helped get the program going was the need for teamwork and communication skills among the graduates.

Working with companies like Daimler-Chrysler, Lockheed Martin, and Black and Decker, Lehigh students have helped develop more than 200 "real-world" products, including an electric violin, an aluminum wheelchair, a front suspension for mountain bikes and a computerized karate scoring board. IPD students have been invited three times to exhibit their products at the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

With help from a U.S Department of Labor and Department of Education grant, the program has been expanded, with freshmen enrolled in the Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) program. Now being offered are reverse engineering courses on how to re-design and improve products ranging from re-use cameras to power tools, with international IPD teams collaborating with student and sponsor teams in the U.S. and Europe.

What differentiates Lehigh students from the rest in job interviews is that they have not only used state-of-the-art equipment to design and manufacture their products, but they also can actually talk about industrial projects on which they've been working. The school already has broken ground on a new $5.2 million building that will eventually become the home of the IPD program - with new labs, machine workshops, spaces to store projects and design studios, as well as offices for the support staff.

"It's a lot of fun and great to teach," says John Ochs, professor and founder of the IPD program at Lehigh University. "You're not lecturing to a sea of faces. You're interacting with them in a way that was not done before. Yes, we've had success with industry, but our most important product are the students, who gain so much from the experience. Successful students are a little less flashy then some high-tech gizmo, but students are our product."

Student Enthusiasm

Ochs says that they worked with a Jersey Shore lemonade entrepreneur who needed a better way to make lemonade for his business. His employees complained that they were continuously cutting their hands while slicing lemons. So a team of IPD students took on the project and invented a better way to slice lemons - or rather peel them - by developing a lemon peeler that eliminated the employees using knives completely.

IPD students also have helped companies save money. In one project, the students found that a thermal formed part was better than using sheet metal. They showed that it was cheaper and used less material than the sheet metal that the company initially wanted to use.

"Our job is to review ideas for new products and new companies, take them seriously, and work with big and small entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground," says Ochs. "We want our students to see that if these guys can go out and start their own businesses, then they can do it, too. We're more about the people and the process rather than the products because you have to remember that when it comes to business - familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds imitation."