Model-based university course programs for model-based engineering

Engineering for products was changed to product lifecycle management (PLM) during the past ten years. This change was in great extent result of continuous developments in CAD/CAM/CAE/CAT and other engineering areas during the last third of the past century. New characteristics of the present PLM-based engineering practice are application of virtual engineering technology, integration of various areas of engineering, and integration of engineering activities for the whole life cycle of product. Engineering is done in professional industrial systems those can not be missed out of higher education course laboratories any more. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze how to bring closer industrial engineering environments to higher education processes. It is obvious that education activities should be modeled similarly as industrial engineering activities to bring them into a common operating environment. In this paper, a new approach to practice oriented higher education course is grounded by a new concept and methodology including considerations about organization of course and industrial activities, connections of PLM technology and higher education methodology, modeling of course activities, and industrial-course process connections.