Value added courses for mechanical engineering?

[ajayguhan]

i'm doing my second year B.tech in Mechanical engineering.

value added courses such as:
1. lean manufacturing
2. six sigma
3. Quality Control
4. 5's
when should i do such courses?
should i do it while I'm working or in the third year.

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

There are management fads that infest the industry every few years. I can remember TPM and TPO, ISO 9000, and now Six Sigma.

Learn how things work first. Let the management fashionistas have their way with different silliness every few years. If you dare to keep up, try not to sound like these people. Most who actually know their way around the business tire of that sort of thing.

 

[KL7AJ]

There are management fads that infest the industry every few years. I can remember TPM and TPO, ISO 9000, and now Six Sigma.

Learn how things work first. Let the management fashionistas have their way with different silliness every few years. If you dare to keep up, try not to sound like these people. Most who actually know their way around the business tire of that sort of thing.

I would agree...and the only item that doesn't fall into the "fuzzy-feely" category is Lean Manufacturing. That's hard science.


eric

 

[bigfooted]

I never had such courses during my studies. Where I work now, we are constantly harassed by people saying we should do a six-sigma analysis for quality control using 5s. It's all in the framework of lean manufacturing of course. To be honest, these concepts can all be documented in detail on a single page and it would be very silly to spend an entire course on it. They are in principle important concepts that just get relabeled every 5 years or so, but they should simply be integrated in some kind of group design project.

 

[AlephZero]

To be honest, these concepts can all be documented in detail on a single page

And in the spirit of lean manufacturing, you should do that without using any ink

Spend your time at college learning some Mech Eng. Yes I know the ME courses are probably harder than this happy-clappy-mangement stuff, but you usually have to work for the worthwhile things in life.

 

[Shaun_W]

I'm going to go against the grain and say that 6S and Lean are in fact highly beneficial to study. I used to work at one of the world's largest manufacturing companies and both of those topics were highly valued. A lot of senior engineering management tended to have strong backgrounds in 6S, and it was something that was instilled into the culture. To label them as "fas" is pretty ignorant, and fairly indicative of the poor attitudes to quality and efficiency often seen in the West that has allowed manufacturing to decline and places in the East like Japan to really give us a run for our money.