Embedding sustainability in product design engineering curriculum: a comparison of needs on an international level

Product Design Engineering is a relatively new engineering discipline that combines Mechanical Engineering studies with Industrial Design. The emergence and credibility of this field has created graduates who can successfully combine the creative thinking of design with the analytical thinking of engineering. A Product Design Engineer forms a vital role in a product development team making it even more necessary to ensure graduates from this field have sustainability embedded into their skill-set. Product Design Engineers are at the forefront of product development; this in turn puts them at the forefront of unsustainable patterns of production and consumption that currently plague the manufacturing industry. Due to this, it is imperative to ensure all Product Design Engineering outcomes have implemented sustainable practices to develop quality productswith environmental concerns in mind. Sustainable design has become more prevalent and is no longer perceived to be purely organic design, or associated with single actions such as recycling. It now also involves concepts of Product Stewardship and Life Cycle Management, including how these concepts translate into current best practice within leading global manufacturing companies. Knowledge of sustainable design has developed through necessity and a better understanding in this area has helped create successful, competitive products with less impact on the environment. The range of theoretical or conceptual knowledge and tools available across the environmental design spectrum are then practiced by the students as applied design methods within studio projects. This paper shows how sustainability is now embedded in Product Design Engineering disciplines and does not only discuss the relevance of the content, but moreover addresses this issue from of student perspective. Three cohorts of undergraduate Product Design Engineering students have been surveyed to respond to individual comprehension of this topic - and how effective this is - on their knowledge base. Two cohorts from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, and the other from EAFIT University, Medellin, Colombia. By doing this, an international perspective of educational experiences in sustainability for Product Design Engineering can be obtained and is discussed in depth within this paper