EDUCATING THE CROSS-CULTURAL ENGINEERS: THE CASE OF TAIWAN INTERNATIONAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION

摘要

With increasing global competition, manufacturing enterprises establish their manufacturing facilities around the globe in order to lower their production cost. The challenge of managing the global manufacturing facilities becomes one of the central issues for Taiwan business community. To answer to this new challenge, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Education in Taiwan sponsor an international scholarship in collaborating with industries and Universities. This paper investigates the motivations and the perception of final results of the participating industrial partners. The first motivation of the participating industrial partners joining the program is to be able to communication with their international customers. The second motivation is due to the necessity of engineers with capability to communication with top management and international staffs in the offshore manufacturing. The academic program is custom designed to meet the requirements of sponsoring companies' needs. With most of the students from Vietnam, the program is delivered in English with complementary Mandarin Chinese courses to improve the communication skill of students. After the training, the engineers can 1) communicate with the sponsors' customers in Vietnam to have their customerization requirements implemented in the products they ordered, 2) communicate with the local staff engineers and operators in the sponsors' manufacturing facilities.