How do you transport an infant safely in an ambulance? Could your favourite underwear work as menstrual protection? And how could we facilitate electric transport at sea? These are some of the questions to which Master’s students presented their solutions at the Product Development Exhibition 2024.
In the Master's programme Product development, students work in teams for one semester in a project course. The course is carried out in close collaboration with industrial partners and addresses real and current problems. The industrial partners provide the course with specific projects related to their own business, and the students’ task is to explore a solution. In addition to a project report, the solutions are presented with models and prototypes in an exhibition.
”This is a large course in terms of both content and credits, but the duration of the project is even more interesting. The course is aligned with a previous course in product planning, and the students are engaged in the same project for almost eight months. This provides a unique experience of a real-life development process that includes iteration and maturation,” says Lars Almefelt who is the examiner of the course.
The projects are varied, ranging from infant transport to period underwear. There is no requirement to produce finished products. The idea is to demonstrate different solutions based on an engineering approach and to learn through collaboration. But many companies use the ideas and concepts in their further development work.
“The collaboration with industry is a win-win situation in many ways. The students get the opportunity to work with a real problem and see what industry has in mind for the future. At the same time, the participating companies get fresh input, or even surprises,” says Lars Almefelt.
The exhibition takes place every year in the study hall in the M building on the Johanneberg campus. There are usually around ten to twelve projects with five to seven students in each group. All projects have supervisors from both academia and industry.
All projects 2024
- NGP of Sweden – Underwear remade to WAU
- Axkid & Semcon – Infant restraint system for pre-hospital transportation
- Modul-System – Development of fixation method for false floor in service vehicles
- Volvo Penta – Penta Island
- Thule – Bring your family – with top notch suspensions
- Volvo Cars – Sunvisor improvement and future in-car privacy study
- Volvo Energy & Mölndal Energy – Battery unit for construction sites with electric machines
- Sunsurf Solar – Cost-effective modular floater for solar photovoltaics
- ZYYX Labs – 3D printer laser cutter
- Valys – A water treatability sensor
The Product Development Project course is a compulsory part of the Master’s programme Product development and is also open to students from Industrial design engineering and Quality and operations management.
Product development, MSc
Master multi-disciplinary product development while taking user needs and the full life cycle of a product into consideration. Product development is a core industrial activity encompassing a great many diverse challenges — a multidisciplinary process of identifying and imagining the wishes of companies, end users, and wider society, and bringing those wishes to reality. Studying this master’s programme, you will acquire the knowledge and practical skills necessary to master multi-disciplinary product development while taking all phases of the product life cycle into consideration. After graduation, you will be well-placed for a variety of career paths, including R&D for large corporations, business development, start-up entrepreneurship, consultancy, or research.
If you want to know more about the Product Development Project course, please contact Lars Almefelt.
- Senior Lecturer, Product Development, Industrial and Materials Science