Enhancing Engineering Management Courses with Global Market Concerned Projects and Case Studies

With the changing global business environment, engineering managers and executives need to deal with the competition related business and engineering issues constantly. They need to have a vision while working on their management and engineering tasks and making various decisions. The objective of this paper is to discuss the ways to educate and train engineering management students to sharpen their abilities in making good decisions and creating a vision in a competitive environment. This paper will also discuss the effect of embedding the consideration of marketing, branding, value creation, innovation, global location characteristics, policies related engineering issues, and competition into class case studies and projects. The purpose is to teach engineering management students how to make good decisions with a broader business and engineering vision while managing engineering and business operations. In this research, the examples discussed include a term case study assigned to students to develop an investment strategy for a top 5 brand value company to increase market share in the next top global smartphone market, a term project to design and develop a transparent factory in the US locations to promote Made-in-USA approach, and a term project to consider moving existing engineering and manufacturing activities in a top smart phone company from abroad back to the US locations for following the Made-in-USA trend. The purpose of using these term case studies and projects in engineering management related classes is to lead students to realize the importance of value creation, market dominance, understanding of competition, innovative approaches, good handling of global economy and policies related issues for successful engineering operations and decision-making.