2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The introduction of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software into the global manufacturing community has elevated the need for trained engineers able to apply these software tools to improve efficiency and collaboration across the enterprise. In many mechanical engineering university curricula, students are only exposed to computer-aided design (CAD) courses. However, with product data management (PDM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) utilities increasingly integrated into the design process, students need additional education opportunities to work directly with this software. This paper investigates the benefits and drawbacks of instructing undergraduate mechanical engineering students to apply an integrated, collaborative PLM system with CAD and PDM features for senior capstone design projects. In the human subject case study, three main objectives were explored - improved collaborative interactions, heightened team creativity and product designs, and the tradeoff between additional manpower hours for PDM software usage and design quality. Surveys were administered throughout the course to measure student satisfaction, team performance, software use, collaboration and team efficiency. The key performance indicators showed that the design teams who utilized the integrated CAD/PDM system fell short in multiple areas compared to those who did not adopt it. Overall, the graduating students demonstrated ambivalence toward the adoption of new design software and preferred using utilities introduced early in their engineering education. The results of this investigation show that introducing PDM software into small engineering design teams may not produce the same benefits as its use in large teams and long-term projects. Further, a need exists to bring PLM concepts and tools earlier into the curriculum to encourage student development.