Use of Conceive-Design Learning Environments to Prepare Engineers for the Development of Complex and Highly Integrated Aeronautical Systems

Embraer, one of the largest aerospace companies in the world, was founded in 1969 to accomplish the vision of the Brazilian government to have, the capacity of designing and manufacturing airplanes. Out of more than 19,000 employees distributed worldwide, the company has 5,900 engineers dedicated to Research & Technology and Integrated Product Development. In order to have recently graduated engineers prepared to tackle its future challenges, Embraer created in 2001 the PEE – Engineering Specialization Program in partnership with ITA – Aeronautics Institute of Technology. PEE comprises a Technical Master’s Program and has already prepared more than 1,400 alumni, graduated in 22 classes; out of them around 1,000 are currently Embraer employees. The selection process is crucial for success. In 2015, more than 5,900 candidates applied for 40 positions. The main objective of PEE is to prepare future engineers to be specialists that will work in multidisciplinary teams, to accomplish the life-cycle design of complex and highly integrated systems. PEE has the duration of 18 months and is organized in three phases. The first phase aims to provide the students with the fundamental knowledge on life cycle design, covering topics from marketing analysis and research & technology, through product and manufacturing processes, up to aspects related to operation, maintenance, and end-of-life disposal. In the second phase, the students select their area of specialization and Master´s thesis topics related to one of the following tracks: a) materials and structures, b) aircraft systems and c) manufacturing. In the third and last phase, the students are organized in multidisciplinary teams to take part in a conceive-design project. The third phase lasts 6 months and students are asked to conceive and design a new aircraft, out of “high level requirements”, such as connecting cities in Brazil, ranging from 400,000 to 2 million people, using secondary airports. Since 2012 some “Lean Product Development” concepts and methods were implemented, aiming to help the students in the learning process and also to be in accordance with Embraer`s new development practices. Some ideas taken into consideration are: a) developing towering technical competence, b) build in learning and continuous improvement, c) establish customer-driven value, d) front load the product development processes to explore alternative solutions, and e) extensive use of simple and visual communication tools for organizational learning. In this context, the objective of this paper is, besides presenting PEE program, to show some results obtained from the last six classes, during the design-conceive projects. Out of innovations in teaching and learning methods that have been adopted, this paper presents results on: a) extensive use of visual communication tools and mock-ups in the “Design Room”, to share created knowledge and technical data; b) involvement of current and former key Embraer specialists in mentoring the students; and c) development of personal and interpersonal skills in the students who are participating in the program.

Proceedings of the 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland, June 12-16 2016