Product dissection and benchmarking are processes commonlyemployed in industry to improve product design and produce superiorperformance and product quality. The process, when applied in anundergraduate academic setting, can improve the process of teachingdesign. It has been applied to teach undergraduate mechanicalengineering students at the junior level. The students, working inteams, conducted a market study of hand-held kitchen mixers, selected anappropriate sample of product units and carried out a benchmarking studyby dissecting each unit. A design database, with customer expectationsas the reference variable, was assembled and the `best in class'established for both a single product and each customer expectation. Are-design exercise was carried out on `mid-performing' product units tobring their performance up to the `best in class' or to exceed it
展开▼
