Learning Environment to Support the Product Development Process

The competitive global market creates challenges like shortened product life cycles and high level of customization with lower costs. Therefore, it is necessary to make investments to achieve competitive gains. In this scenario, qualification of human resources is a factor of success in the global competition. To fulfill this requirement, a new way of learning that integrates education in a real factory environment was developed. This concept is called Learning Factories. It brings an environment that encourages the experimental learning, simulating the key features of a real production environment in an academic setting. This teaching strategy reduces the gap between the knowledge (University) and the action (industry). This paper describes a learning factory testbed environment supporting the product development process, which was implemented at the Methodist University of Piracicaba, Brazil. This new learning environment simulates a real product development process for undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The application of Learning Factory shows in practice the tools applied in the product development process and involves design teams, product management, engineering changes request and, during the entire process, the communication and workflow features of the product data management tools used in the implementation of the environment.