Lean Thinking And Quality Control Strategies For Improving Engineering Educational Processes

The quality of a product, in general, depends on the quality of the input materials and the quality of the processes used to realize the product. To improve or control the product quality, continuous monitoring of both the input material and the various processes is essential. The monitoring process itself requires establishing control mechanisms and feedback links to the proper process checkpoints. Similarly, the quality of the educational process in any field usually follows the same principles. In other words the quality of both the individual and the educational process determines the quality of the educational outcome. The improvement of the engineering education outcome is directly linked to controlling the quality of educational processes. These educational outcomes, however, should be directly linked to the desired attributes and quality standards defined by the end receivers of the education process. To meet the educational objectives based on the desired outcome requires departmental structure with empowered process ownership and continuous communication strategies. In this paper a quality improvement and control process for engineering education based on lean thinking principles is presented. The three lean thinking areas of development needed to achieve the educational process quality are discussed. The developed quality measures and feedback are linked to the educational process outcomes established based on the receivers input. Through continuous communication and feedback with empowered process ownership, academic program quality improvement and control can be achieved.