Manufacturing Organizations From The Inside Out: Classrooms With A View

This paper examines the experience of teaching a single course, Industrial Organization, to three very different groups of students. The first group was a mixture of traditional and non-traditional students, taking the course at a satellite campus location. The second and third groups were each made up of employees of a single employer, all attending the course at their respective industrial locations. In one case a large, multi-national corporation and in the other case a small, relatively young U. S. –Japanese joint venture. The course material covered the structures and functions of modern manufacturing organizations. Because of their different circumstances and life experiences, these groups of students had widely differing perspectives on modern manufacturing practices. Comparison of these three groups of students offers some interesting and useful insights into appropriate teaching methods and course emphasis for students presently employed in a manufacturing environment.