The automotive manufacturing industry has transitioned in the past 20 years from a central technical focus to an integrated and globally distributed supply chain. As car makers outsource not only a greater portion of their manufacturing, but also their technical design responsibility, a more thorough understanding of both design and manufacturing changes' effect on total vehicle and total production system performance and cost is critical. The distribution of technical responsibility in automotive manufacturing has motivated the development of a specific curriculum in Automotive Engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina, USA, with core focus on the interaction between systems, both in design and manufacturing. In this development, a detailed survey of automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers and major suppliers was carried out. The differences in perceived need between these organization types is explored, and the incorporation of these perceived needs to a new Automotive Engineering curriculum is presented. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
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