Harnessing Engineering Expertise in Industry: Activating Six Sigma Themes in a College/Industry Course Development Collaboration

With over 10,000 Baby Boomers a day retiring from the U.S. workforce, the issue of retaining irreplaceable knowledge capital was at the forefront of strategic initiatives of industrial leaders. In spite of the attention the topic was receiving in industry, little mind space or targeted research within the academy was being focused on the looming issue. In 2011, with urging and support from an Engineering Education Industrial Advisory Council (IAC), a first of its kind course was launched entitled “Harnessing Engineering Expertise in Industry”. The graduate course, codeveloped and instructed by university faculty and members of the IAC, explored the topic of engineering expertise from an industrial perspective. The objective of this course was to make explicit the concept of expertise in industry, to replicate and/or develop research based approaches for identifying and capturing this expertise, and to consider how these approaches could benefit industrial enterprise. Further, rigorous Engineering Education research practices were put to work underpinning the topical exploration, and enabling the class deliverables which included individually developed, industry facing, research proposals, and formal proposal “pitch” presentations to industry representatives. Beneficial outcomes from developing this course have included: 1) establishing a foundation of college/industry collaborative graduate level course work that supports the concerns of industry facing stakeholders and beyond, and 2) offering engineering education students a unique area of research specialization focused on lifelong learning and engineering practice in Industry. Framed using the so-called “six themes of Six Sigma”: genuine focus on the customer; data and fact driven management; processes are where the action is; proactive management; boundaryless collaboration; and drive for perfection-tolerate failure [1], this paper unpacks the collaborative processes and perspectives by which this course was developed and continues to evolve and improve. Authors suggest that collaborative industry/academic efforts may benefit by reflecting upon their work product through the six themes of Six Sigma as an alternative assessment framework to traditional academic assessment approaches.