The University Record, December 4, 2000
Photo story: Designs offer ways to organize automobile
clutter
Pink Lee, a master’s degree student in the College of Engineering, shows Shaun Jackson, associate professor of art, her product design, ‘Stylo,’ at the Tauber Manufacturing Institute’s (TMI) tradeshow, held on Nov. 29 at the Media Union Gallery. The tradeshow allowed students in TMI’s Integrated Product Development course to showcase their designs through fully functional prototypes. This year, students were challenged to design an automobile ‘clutter butler’ to store items often found in vehicles. In the course, engineering, business, and art and design students are taken through all steps of product design, manufacture and marketing. The students co-enroll in a machining course at Washtenaw Community College (WCC), where they learn to use the tools in the WCC machine shop to build their products. Created by William Lovejoy, the John Psaouthakis Research Professor of Manufacturing Management and professor of operations management, the course involves faculty and students from the School of Business Administration, College of Engineering, and School of Art and Design.
Those who attended the tradeshow acted as customers, first making hypothetical purchases based on information on the Web and then evaluating the physical prototypes displayed by students. The ‘Versacube’ received the most votes in the Web competition. Photo by Martin Vloet, U-M Photo Services
