October 2007 Mechanical Engineering: Editorial

editorial

think tank

By
John G. Falcioni,
Editor-in-Chief

Budding industries, as well as surging conventional ones, are generating numerous new career growth opportunities for engineers. But with the opportunities come new professional and technical challenges.

A few months ago, at ASME's summer annual meeting in Toronto, a special Think Tank Summit comprising experts on various topics was convened to discuss three critical areas.

The first focused on the fundamental professional issue of teaching engineering, and whether a double standard exists among professors and administrators in how they teach engineering to women vs. how they teach men. This controversy isn't entirely new, but results of a report released by the National Academies last year heightened awareness of the issue.

Even before publication of the report—which charged that institutions of higher learning do have an inherent bias against women engineering students—the topic triggered sharp and emotional exchanges between those who feel strongly that such a bias exists and those who don't.

The report blames unintentional "outmoded institutional structures" in academia for hindering the progress of women in science and engineering.

Coming together at the Summit for a lively exchange were the co-author of the report; a college president who is past vice president of ASME's Board on Minorities and Women; a mechanical engineering university professor; the president of the Society of Women Engineers; a psychologist who specializes in how men and women learn; and a 2007 mechanical engineering female university graduate.

The Summit then moved to the technical realm of product lifecycle management, or PLM. Typically a set of software tools, PLM helps manage information throughout the product development process, and eases communication and collaboration during the lifecycle of a product, from idea through retirement.

The discussion, which addressed best practices, ventured into whether there is a sufficient talent pool of engineers in the United States. The high-level participants included a principal scientist at Medtronic's cardiac rhythm management division; the technical fellow and enterprise visualization architect at Boeing; the general manager of vehicle production engineering at Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, N.A.; and the lead analyst in PLM strategies at the research firm Gartner Inc.

The final session brought together different perspectives on human factors engineering—a central theme in product development that often challenges an engineer's perspective of what designing a product is really all about.

Participants were an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Toronto, whose specialty is human factors; the program director for engineering design at the National Science Foundation; the associate technical fellow in human systems engineering at Northrop Grumman; and the vice president of Apple Computer, who is also a former executive at Hewlett-Packard and one of the foremost authorities on human factors engineering.

The sessions on PLM and human factors were each followed by two concurrent workshops.

The ASME Think Tank Summit was co-sponsored by COMSOL, Dassault Systèmes, SolidWorks, and Mechanical Engineering magazine.

The ASME Think Tank Summit was videotaped and can now be viewed in its entirety, free of charge, by visiting ASME's Web site (asme.org), this magazine's site (memagazine.org), or ASME News Online (asmenews.org).