Granta Design is demonstrating a new release of the CES Selector software at the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) conference in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. CES Selector is now claimed to be faster to learn and easier to use.

• Training
• Substitution

Enhancements in CES Selector 2008 include: a quick and simple method to specify design objectives; a new Eco Audit Tool for eco design; new capabilities for cost analysis; further plastic selection options; and extended coverage of medical materials. CES Selector combines comprehensive data on the properties of materials with powerful graphical software for analysis and selection. It enables designers, engineers and materials experts to explore materials and process options and to make and justify rational, auditable selection and substitution decisions. It also helps materials producers to analyse and position their products. The software is particularly valuable in balancing competing engineering, economic and environmental objectives.

The 2008 version makes it much easier to specify design objectives via a new pictorial menu in which engineers view and select the mechanical, thermal, electrical or barrier application that they wish to study. Simple drop-down lists enable them to choose variables (such as dimensions, cost, strength or CO2 footprint) to optimise or constrain. The software then plots graphs that show the best materials for the user's requirements and display trade-offs of competing objectives. Although the CES Selector methodology is accepted as a standard for such rational materials selection, users previously had to specify design objectives as mathematical formulae.

The Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) is a software package that has been produced to help answer these questions. Developed over a number of years.

The new menu makes the software much quicker to use in practical design. This focus on practical use extends beyond software features – Granta is also introducing more flexible site- and company-wide licensing, as well as new training options for users. Another new design feature is the Eco Audit Tool. A user enters information about a product design's composition, processing, use, transportation and disposal. The tool combines this with eco property data to estimate the energy usage and CO2 output at each stage in the proposed product's lifecycle.

Knowing which phases in the lifecycle will make the most significant contribution to environmental impact can help to guide the design strategy. CES Selector's analysis capabilities can be used to identify materials and process changes that will minimise this impact. The aim is to make such decisions early in the design phase, when they cost least and have the most effect.

At the heart of CES Selector is a series of data modules containing comprehensive property and processing data about thousands of engineering materials. Updates and extensions to this data increase its relevance and effectiveness. New price estimates are available for over 3000 materials.

These enable users to rank materials based on 'cost per unit of function' for an engineering application, helping them to make selection and substitution decisions that reduce or avoid cost. Such decisions are particularly important in a time of volatile materials pricing – nickel, copper and the feedstocks for commodity plastics offer recent examples of price fluctuations. New specialist data are also available for medical and food contact applications and for plastics.

The medical data covers issues such as the regulatory approval status of materials and their sterilisability, resistance to chemicals, and permeability. This data has been extended to cover not only medical plastics, but also metals and ceramics. Plastics data now include more information on important classes including elastomers, rubbers and transparent plastics.

Dr Patrick Coulter, chief operating officer at Granta, states: 'CES Selector 2008 responds to two key trends that we see in working with our customers. The first is the need for practical design tools to enable decision making early in the design process, saving cost and time. The second is the increasing importance of environmental objectives.

Enhancements in these and other areas will increase the impact of CES Selector on key business issues in engineering enterprises.'

This course provides tools and methods for creating new products. The course is intended for students with a strong career interest in new product development, entrepreneurship, and/or technology development. The course follows an overall product methodology, including the identification of customer needs, generation of product concepts, prototyping, and design-for-manufacturing. Weekly student assignments are focused on the design of a new product and culminate in the creation of a prototype.

The course is open to juniors and seniors in SEAS or Wharton. For one of the IPD 515's 'mini-projects' I teamed with a fellow IPD student to design a product called iMagnets, a solution for keeping headphone cables from becoming tangled.

On a compressed schedule of less than a month we designed, tested, iterated, and mass produced the iMagnets. With funding from the course, we had parts for over 1,000 products injection molded. Patrick Brandon: IPD '13. Industrial design/ Product design is a profession that is intimately involved with human interaction with functional artifacts, both physical and virtual. The ability to identify, analyze, interpret and extrapolate ergonomic data to solve conflicts in user interaction with the manufactured world becomes critical. The course is a mini-lecture / studio style course (3 hrs.) in which the students will work in class on assigned projects, finding, analyzing, extrapolating and applying data to design solutions and creating mockups, models and prototypes for user testing of their designs. This studio is structured for IPD students as an intensive, interdisciplinary exploration of Design.

The goal of the studio is to give students a firsthand experience of various processes involved in creating successful integrated product designs. Students will go through various stages of the design process including problem definition, concept development, ideation, prototyping, and idea refinement. The purpose of the IPD design studio is to offer options of ways to approach and resolve larger design objectives.

In the second semester of the four-semester studio sequence, we ask students to take a step back from what and how they are designing and ask the question of why they are designing. Students will learn a rigorous process for understanding stakeholder needs and for translating those needs into implications for product design. They will begin to develop greater awareness of the personal, social, competitive and technological contexts that their products fit into, and to learn how to design for those contexts.

Integrated Product Design is a wide-ranging field. This course is intended to familiarize students with the field and help them find their place within it. During the semester, students will learn the theories and methods of integrated product design through a combination of lectures, readings, and exercises. The course will examine the different ideas and techniques involved in integrated product design, reviewing critical concepts, historical developments, and current applications. The course will familiarize students with the practice of integrated product design, provide them with different perspectives on the design process and highlight the diverse types of problems that require an integrated approach to solve.

The course will examine the different ideas and techniques involved in integrated product design, reviewing critical concepts, historical developments, and current applications. The course will familiarize students with the practice of integrated product design, provide them with different perspectives on the design process and highlight the diverse types of problems that require an integrated approach to solve. By the end of the second semester students will have a better understanding of the breadth of the world of integrated product design and a point of view on their place in it. The last two semesters of the IPD studio sequence consist of the IPD Final Project. Students are given the opportunity to work on design problems that follow their passion or to work on a real world problem provided by our partners in academia, industry, or the non-profit world.

The Final Project enables students to put the skills that they have developed in engineering, design arts and business into practice, following the process from initial opportunity identification into the development of a working product with a complementary business plan. Interdisciplinary group work is encouraged on final projects.

Working in teams offers students the opportunity to collaborate across skill sets and learn from teammates from different disciplines. Final Projects provide students with ample opportunity to learn leadership and collaboration skills that are invaluable in today's workplace. This interdisciplinary design course focuses on the design, development, and evaluation of appropriate medical technologies for world health, particularly for diagnostic devices for Sub-Saharan Africa. Emphasis is placed on the process of developing appropriate technologies with sustainable designs for medical devices with utility in a local environment.

The course integrates educational, training and service learning in a two-semester course with field-based design. The goal of this course is to develop the thinking and research tools that will enable students to understand medical need and apply engineering design of appropriate technologies for use in diagnosing disease in local environments. The majority of today's engineered products move through an advanced computer-aided workflow which greatly speeds design and process time. This course will explore the fundamental components of this workflow through a combination of lectures, hands-on exercises, and a semester design project. General course topics include: fundamental design principles, project definition and needfinding, advanced computer-aided design, rapid prototyping techniques, computer-controlled machining, and an in-depth exploration of the modern analysis and simulation tools that have revolutionized the way in which products are designed. Enrollment is limited. This is a creative & iterative problem solving course that uses a series of mechanical design challenge projects to move students into the broad realm of unpredictable often incalculable time-constrained problem solving.

It explores a wide variety of problem definition, exploration and solving 'tools,' and a variety of surrounding 'design thinking' topics, such as ethics and the design of experience. Drawing and prototyping are used in the projects for ideation, iteration, speculation and communication. This course is aimed at providing current and future product design/development engineers, manufacturing engineers, and product development managers with an applied understanding of Design for Manufacturability (DFM) concepts and methods.

The course content includes materials from multiple disciplines including: engineering design, manufacturing, marketing, finance, project management, and quality systems. 'In DFM, I learned to use CES (Cambridge Engineering Selector). It's a really powerful software with a massive database of material properties and other information that can be helpful when choosing materials and manufacturing methods. We learned how to use it for our project, which was to redesign a curling iron. I also definitely enjoyed getting to know about diverse kinds of manufacturing methods.'

- Sooyoung Yulie Cho: IPD '13. This course teaches advanced mechatronics concepts that include the design and implementation of networked embedded systems, large-scale actuation, advanced sensing and control. This course pairs design school and engineering students to form interdisciplinary teams that together design and build electro-mechanical reactive spaces and scenic/architectural elements in the context of the performing arts. The two disciplinary groups will be treated separately and receive credit for different courses (ARCH746 will be taught concurrently and in some cases co-located) as they will be learning different things. Engineering students gain design sensibilities and advanced mechatronics in the form of networked embedded processing and protocols for large scale actuation and sensing. Design students learn elementary mechatronics and design reactive architectures and work with engineering students to build them.

The class will culminate in a collection of short performance pieces inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with both mechatronic and human performers from the Pig Iron Theater Troupe, A final paper will be required that is ready for conference proceedings. In many modern systems, mechanical elements are tightly coupled with electronic components and embedded computers.

Mechatronics is the study of how these domains are interconnected, and this hands-on, project-based course provides an integrated introduction to the fundamental components within each of the three domains, including: mechanical elements (prototyping, materials, actuators and sensors, transmissions, and fundamental kinematics), electronics (basic circuits, filters, op amps, discrete logic, and interfacing with mechanielements), and computing (interfacing with the analog world, microprocessor technology, basic control theory, and programming). This class provides a graduate-level introduction to the field of haptics, which involves human interaction with real, remote, and virtual objects through the sense of touch. Haptic interfaces employ specialized robotic hardware and unique computer algorithms to enable users to explore and manipulate simulated and distant environments. Primary class topics include human haptic sensing and control, haptic interface design, virtual environment rendering methods, teleoperation control algorithms, and system evaluation; current applications for these technologies will be highlighted, and important techniques will be demonstrated in a laboratory setting. Coursework includes problem sets, programming assignments, reading and discussion of research papers, and a final project. Appropriate for students in any engineering discipline with interest in robotics, dynamic systems, controls, or human-computer interaction. As Craig Vogel notes in The Design of Things to Come, 'We are in a new economic age that is in need of a new renaissance in product development, one that leverages multiple minds working in concert.'

With this mindset, this interdisciplinary workshop guides students through the product design process from design brief to concept generation and prototype development in one semester, working firsthand with Transwall, a leading manufacturer of demountable wall systems, to focus on a specific product need. The design opportunity looks for the next generation of pre-manufactured wall systems; getting away from field construction walls and looking at critical issues of mass-produced wall systems: flexibility, mobility, structural stability, acoustics, transparency/opacity and operability. During the workshop, students will explore the context that creates the unique need for a new product and have an opportunity to conceptualize their ideas through sketches, digital modeling and prototype development. Architecture in the schools is a 25+ year program of teaching architecture in Philadelphia area schools run by the American Institute of Architects. As a participant in the AIE (Architecture In Education) program students have the opportunity to work directly with children in the classroom making an impact on their lives and on the future of our neighborhoods and cities.

Students work with a classroom teacher and a design professional to develop a weekly series of eight (1-1/2 hour) interdisciplinary experiential lessons using the built environment as a laboratory to create stimulating new ways of seeing, learning, and doing. Requirements for credit are attendance at all meetings and the submission of a brief summary report of the exercises that were used in the classroom. This course teaches advanced mechatronics concepts that include the design and implementation of networked embedded systems, large-scale actuation, advanced sensing and control. This course pairs design school and engineering students to form interdisciplinary teams that together design and build electro-mechanical reactive spaces and scenic/architectural elements in the context of the performing arts. The two disciplinary groups will be treated separately and receive credit for different courses (ARCH746 will be taught concurrently and in some cases co-located) as they will be learning different things. Engineering students gain design sensibilities and advanced mechatronics in the form of networked embedded processing and protocols for large scale actuation and sensing.

Design students learn elementary mechatronics and design reactive architectures and work with engineering students to build them. The class will culminate in a collection of short performance pieces inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with both mechatronic and human performers from the Pig Iron Theater Troupe, A final paper will be required that is ready for conference proceedings. Today's children enjoy a wide array of play experiences, with stories, learning, characters and games that exist as physical stand-alone objects or toys enhanced with electronics or software. In this course, students will explore the domain of play and learning in order to develop original proposals for new product experiences that are at once tangible, immersive and dynamic. They will conduct research into education and psychology while also gaining hands-on exposure to new product manifestations in a variety of forms, both physical and digital. Students will be challenged to work in teams to explore concepts, share research and build prototypes of their experiences in the form of static objects that may have accompanying electronic devices or software. Final design proposals will consider future distribution models for product experiences such as 3D printing, virtual reality and software-hardware integration.

Instruction will be part seminar and part workshop, providing research guidance and encouraging connections will subject matter experts throughout the Penn campus. This course provides a platform, in the form of furniture, to execute and deploy architectural and engineering principles at full scale. It will be conducted as a seminar and workshop and will introduce students to a variety of design methodologies that are unique to product design. The course will engage in many of the considerations that are affiliated with mass production: quality control, efficient use of material, durability, and human factors.

Students will conduct research into industrial design processes, both traditional and contemporary, and will adapt these processes into techniques to design a prototype for limited production. Instruction will include model making; the full scale production of a prototype, its detailing; design for mass production and the possibility of mass customization; design for assembly, furniture case studies; software integration, optimization studies, and a site visit to a furniture manufacturer. This course provides an introduction to the ideas and techniques of Industrial Design, which operates between Engineering and Marketing as the design component of Integrated Product Development. The course is intended for students from engineering, design, or business with an interest in multi-disciplinary, needs-based product design methods. It will follow a workshop model, combining weekly lectures on design manufacturing, with a progressive set of design exercises.

'One of the projects was the watering can project. We did some market research and turned in several proposals. We chose two of them to refine and build mock ups. After we chose the final one, we worked on the task flow analysis and the ergonomics. Finally we got to make it!

I loved learning how to thermoform. It meant a lot of work, but was definitely worth it.' - Carolina Garzon: IPD '13.

Smart objects are information-based products that are in ongoing dialogs with people, the cloud and each other. By crafting rich interactions, designers can create expressive behaviors for these objects based on sophisticated programmed responses. At the same time, sensor technologies have enabled us to introduce natural gestures as a means of interacting with a product. (Not only can we push, pull and twist data value, but we can wave at, caress, tilt and shake it as well.) With an explosion of new possibilities for object interaction and human control, it is the designer's role to envision new solutions that are both meaningful and responsible.

Training

Students will learn through a series of lectures and hands-on studio exercises, interaction systems, ergonomics, data networks and contexts of use. The course will culminate in a final project that considers all aspects of smart object design within the context of a larger theme. A seminar and design workshop that explores associative and parametric CAD-CAM strategies, to enable an interactive continuity between conception and fabrication. Through parametric 3D constructions, students will explore how to link different aspects of the architectural projects, such as: (1) design intention; (2) control of variation and adaptation; (3) construction constraints; (4) digital fabrication processes.

The course emphasizes the cross-fertilization of formal, technical and performative aspects of the design activity. This course is a research-based design studio that introduces new materials, fabrication, and prototyping techniques to develop a series of design proposals in response to the theme: Cultures of Making. This semester of the studio will focus on thinking through the language of three new technologies — digital fabrication, printed electronic, and biosynthesis - to respond creatively and critically to emerging social, cultural, and environmental issues. Through lectures and hands-on-workshop students will produce three functional design prototypes to realize their ideas in different capacities and learn how to position their work within contemporary art, media and design. Engineers and scientists create and lead great companies, hiring managers when and where needed to help execute their vision. Designed expressly for students having a keen interest in technological innovation, this course investigates the roles of inventors and founders in successful technology ventures.

Through case studies and guest speakers, we introduce the knowledge and skills needed to recognize and seize a high-tech entrepreneurial opportunity — be it a product or service — and then successfully launch a startup or spin-off company. The course studies key areas of intellectual property, its protection and strategic value; opportunity analysis and concept testing; shaping technology driven inventions into customer-driven products; constructing defensible competitive strategies; acquiring resources in the form of capital, people and strategic partners; and the founder's leadership role in an emerging high-tech company. Throughout the course emphasis is placed on decisions faced by founders, and on the sequential risks and determinants of success in the early growth phase of a technology venture. The course is designed for, but not restricted to, students of engineering and applied science and assumes no prior business education. This course is the sequel to EAS 545 and focuses on the planning process for a new technology venture. Like its prerequisite, the course is designed expressly for students of engineering and applied science having a keen interest in technological innovation.

Whereas EAS 545 investigates the sequential stages of engineering entrepreneurship from the initial idea through the early growth phase of a startup company, EAS 546 provides hands-on experience in developing a business plan for such a venture. Working in teams, students prepare and present a comprehensive business plan for a high-tech opportunity. The course expands on topics from EAS 545 with more in-depth attention to: industry and marketplace analysis; competitive strategies related to high-tech product/service positioning, marketing, development and operations; and preparation of sound financial plans. Effective written and verbal presentation skills are emphasized throughout the course. Ultimately, each team presents its plan to a distinguished panel of recognized entrepreneurs, investors and advisors from the high-tech industry.

Why do some products catch on and achieve huge popularity while others fail? Why do some behaviors spread like wildfire while others languish? How do certain ideas seem to stick in memory while others disappear the minute you hear them? More broadly, what factors lead to trends, social contagion, and social epidemics? Interactive media, word of mouth, and viral marketing are important issues for companies, brands, and organizations. This course looks at these and other topics as it examines how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on and become popular.

Marketers want their product to be popular, organizations want their social change initiative to catch on and entrepreneurs want their ideas to stick. This course will touch on four main aspects: (1) Characteristics of products, ideas, and behaviors that lead them to be successful. (2) Aspects of individual psychology that influence what things are successful. (3) Interpersonal processes, or how interactions between individuals drive success. (4) Social networks, or how patterns of social ties influence success. The development of new products (goods or services) is an intensively cross-functional process. This course examines that process from the marketing perspective and identifies the key points of contact with operations, finance, organizational policy, and strategic planning.

Thus, this course is very much concerned with ideas and how to select the best ideas and make them a reality. The main objectives of the course are (1) to familiarize students with the strategies, frameworks, conceptual tools, and types of marketing research that are considered best practices in the development of new products and (2) to give students the opportunity to apply some of these ideas and methods in the evaluation of a specific product concept, customizing the learning experience to their own needs and interests. The objective of the course is to provide a rigorous experience in marketing research methods. The course is aimed at the manager, who is the ultimate user of the research and is responsible for determining the major scope and direction of research activities.

Techniques of data collection, evaluation of alternative sources of information, and methods of evaluating data and presenting the results are covered. The course should help managers recognize the role of systematic information gathering and analysis in making marketing decisions. The course also deals with how to define information needs; the use of test marketing procedures; forms of analysis applicable to marketing research information; and the role of models in decision making.

This course will expose students to the theoretical and empirical 'building blocks' that will allow them to develop and implement powerful models of customer behavior. Over the years, researchers and practitioners have used these methods for a wide variety of applications, such as new product sales forecasting, analyses of media usage, customer valuation, and targeted marketing programs. These same techniques are also very useful for other types of business (and non-business) problems. The course will be entirely lecture-based with a strong emphasis on real-time problem solving. Most sessions will feature sophisticated numerical investigations using Microsoft Excel.

Much of the material is highly technical. The ability to solve problems creatively and generate change is a recognized standard of success and plays an important role in gaining a competitive advantage in many areas of business management. This course is designed to teach students several creative problem solving methodologies that complement other managerial tools acquired in undergraduate and graduate studies. The course offers students the opportunity to learn how to solve problems, identify opportunities, and generate those elusive ideas that potentially generate enormous benefits to organizations. The objectives of this course are to enhance the student's (a) creativity (b) ability to innovate and (c) ability to identify, recruit, develop, manage, retain, and collaborate with creative people. The course includes: interaction with guest lecturers; a review of the literature on creativity, creative people, innovation, and design as well as the leadership and management of creative people and innovation; hands on learning of approaches for generating creative ideas; applications of creativity to selected management domains; and integration via individual assignments and a group project in which interdisciplinary teams of students generate a creative product, service, customer experience, business or strategy.

This course examines how organizations can develop and leverage excellence in process management. The first module focuses on operations strategy. In these classes, we examine what constitutes an operation strategy and how organizations can create value by managing complexity, uncertainty, and product development. In the second half of the course, we discuss recent developments in both manufacturing and service industries.

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Specifically, we examine initiatives in quality, lean manufacturing and enterprise-wide planning systems. The course is recommended for those interested in consulting or operations careers, as well as students with an engineering background who wish to develop a better understanding of managing production processes. This course is about understanding emerging technology enablers with a goal of stimulating thinking on new applications for commerce. No prerequisite or technical background is assumed. The class is self-contained (mainly lecture-based) and will culminate in a class-driven identification of novel businesses that exploit these enablers.

No prerequisite or technical background is assumed. Students with little prior technical background can use the course to become more technologically informed. Those with moderate to advanced technical background may find the course a useful survey of emerging technologies.

The course is recommended for students interested in careers in consulting, investment banking and venture capital in the tech sector.