Overview

Course description

This graduate course focuses on issues related to the development of products for the global market. The need has been brought about by the global economy in which companies are having to compete and increase market share. Furthermore, mergers and acquisitions of the 90s have created a large number of multi-nationals well equipped to do product development, engineering and manufacturing all around the world. In this course, we consider the development of product for the global markets as well as developing them globally.

This course has been offered every Fall since 2000. In Fall 2008, it will be offered jointly in the three campuses -  Technical University of Berlin in Germany, Seoul National University in  South Korea, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Using video-conferencing the lectures are transmitted "live" across time zones. The class starts at 8 a.m. in Michigan, 2 p.m. in Berlin, and 9 p.m. in Seoul (10 p.m. when the US and Europe revert back to standard time).

The course employs a case-study approach. Several case-studies on global product development are presented from our corporate partners (Whirlpool, Samsung Electronics, Steelcase, Kodak, Hyundai, etc.) and follow-up lectures focus on issues highlighted by the case studies.

This is a project-based course in which each (global) student team comprising students from the three universities are responsible for the development of a product for the global market. The semester project is assigned on the first day of class. During  the semester, the project teams use collaboration technology tools such as blackboard, instant messaging, email, web and video-conferencing, extensively.

Two face-to-face meetings of the global teams are organized during the semester.  Each year the final week's event also include a Global Education Forum attended by academic and industry leaders. In the forum, broader issues related to globalization of education is considered and a panel of experts share their opinions and answer questions posed by the audience.

This year, the first meeting will be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the week of September 5-12, 2008. The final meeting and the project prototype exhibition will be held at Seoul, South Korea in the first week of December 2008.

A ground breaking course like this would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors, to whom we say Thank You!