Global Experiential Projects with a Manufacturer in India: Insights from Five Years of Experience

Abstract

I n 2006, a two-credit hour projects course was developed at the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, in partnership with a manufacturer in India. The course was designed to provide experience of working on consulting projects with industry while exposing them to global best practices. A select group of undergraduate engineering and management, Masters in Human Resources, Masters/PhD's in engineering, and MBA students begin the five-month course in January each year to converge on the client facility in India in May for three weeks of fieldwork. The course ends about the middle of June after students have presented the results and recommendations to the company managers and have submitted the final reports. Year after year, improvements have been made to enrich students' experiences, which have lead to a well-structured program. In its fifth year of operation, the program has proved to be a win-win for both the students and the industrial partner. In this paper, we present key details of the design and delivery of these projects. We discuss the feedback mechanisms used to improve the course. We believe that the global setup of this projects course is unique and that our experience provides useful insights to those interested in developing such a course.

A Survey of Research in Field-Based Education: A Summary of Process, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned

“…in some way. Some authors report it is critical to procure local clients for ease of access and logistics (Armacost andLowe 2003, Milne andZander 2012), while others are explicitly international in scope (Kopczak and Fransoo 2000, Pilotte et al 2012, Aserkar 2013. Giauque (1980) describes the successful yield from a cold-call style letter writing campaign.…”

“…(Gorman 2010, Pilotte et al 2012 Front-burner issues with real value to the client incentivize enthusiastic client participation and motivate students. Gorman (2010) suggests a project with financial value to justify a team of three, over 15 weeks, at 20 hours per week, or a consulting project costing $100,000.…”

“…Students may bid on projects (Armacost and Lowe 2003, Milne and Zander 2012, Pilotte et al 2012, Gorman 2011, Rand and Ranyard 2013, Salo 2012) based on the proposal, and in some cases client presentation at introductory meetings. Milne and Zander also work on roughly a first-comefirst-serve basis, subject to scheduling constraints.…”

“…Aserkar (2013) discusses nominations of students to work on industry projects. Pilotte et al (2012) describes 15-20 student acceptances out of 25 to 35 applications in that course. Both of these authors describe international experience, where participation is costly for the students in terms of money and time.…”

“…Utilize an industry liaison. (Hillon et al 2012 Pilotte et al 2012) Such courses are resource intensive, and in general the student-faculty ratio is lower. Administration must support that expense.…”