Teaching engineering design through senior project or capstone engineering courses has increased in recent years. The trend toward increasing the design component in engineering curricula is part of an effort to better prepare graduates for engineering practice. This paper describes the standard practices and current state of capstone design education throughout the country as revealed through a literature search of over 100 papers relating to engineering design courses. Major topics include the development of capstone design courses, course descriptions, project information, details of industrial involvement, and special aspects of team‐oriented design projects. An extensive list of references is provided.

Senior project or Capstone‐type courses have existed at engineering schools for many years. Capstone courses provide student engineers the opportunity to solve real‐world engineering projects, and have been highly regarded as important learning activities. A survey of Capstone courses in engineering departments throughout North America was conducted in order to understand current practices in Capstone education. This study was conducted for presentation at the 1994 Advances in Capstone Education Conference, held at Brigham Young University, which brought together engineering educators interested in improving Capstone experiences. This conference was sponsored by ASEE, ASME, SME, and NSF. Response to the study was very high, with 360 departments from 173 schools responding to the survey. Survey results were categorized into five major areas of interest: Profile of the Respondents, Course Description Information, Faculty Involvement in Capstone Education, Project Information, and Industrial Involvement in Capstone Education. Graphs provide the results of responses to survey questions.

Quality is essential to customer satisfaction and competitive success. Unfortunately, resource constraints can place the small-firm manufacturer at a quality disadvantage. This paper considers the benefits and barriers to International Standards Organization (ISO) 9000 certification among small-firm manufacturers. An empirical study explores whether small manufacturers can successfully implement and benefit from a standardized and resource-intensive program such as ISO 9000. The answer is yes if management can internalize core ISO practices. Keys to success include inculcating a quality culture, reducing behaviors that inhibit ISO adoption, performing a readiness analysis that helps tailor the ISO program to company needs, and leveraging a dynamic environment to drive quality consciousness.

It is sometimes forgotten that industry is an important customer of engineering education. Ignoring this relationship has produced graduates that often fail to meet the changing needs of industry in todays competitive environment. On the basis of feedback from our industrial customers, faculty from Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering at Brigham Young University have jointly developed a new senior capstone design course entitled Integrated Product and Process Design. This new capstone course is centered on industrial design and manufacturing projects. These projects involve both product and process design activities. Multidisciplinary teams of students are taught a structured development approach to produce typical industrial deliverables. These deliverables include a functional specification, product and process design, prototype, and first production sample. This paper identifies changing industrial needs, describes how the course was designed to meet these needs, and presents results from the initial offerings of the course.

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