Integrated Engineering Skills for Improving the System Competence Level

online in Wiley InterScience, (www.interscience.wiley.com)International audienceIntegrated product development is increasingly a challenge of understanding and predicting the complete product lifecycle, and of treating the product as a whole in all phases of development. This article points out that this trend has significant implications on the competence profiles of engineers, which are nowadays insufficiently taken into account by education and training programs, aswell as skill certification schemes. Building on the highly innovative and successful European-wide professional training and certification scheme of the European Certificates and Qualification Association (ECQA), it suggests a basic skill profile that is characteristic for modern job roles in Integrated Engineering, and justifies the integration into the ECQA platform. It points out that this initiative marks a major step towards the improvement of engineers' system competence levels