This course introduces you to modern manufacturing with four areas of emphasis: manufacturing processes, equipment/control, systems, and design for manufacturing. The course exposes you to integration of engineering and management disciplines for determining manufacturing rate, cost, quality and flexibility. Topics include process physics, equipment design and automation/control, quality, design for manufacturing, industrial management, and systems design and operation.

Class objectives are: internalize the attributes along which the success or failure of a manufacturing process, machine, or system will be measured: quality, cost, rate and flexibility; provide exposure to a range of current industrial processes and practices used to manufacture products in high and low volumes; apply physics to understand the factors that control the rate of production and influence the quality, cost and flexibility of processes; understand the impact of manufacturing constraints on product design and process planning; apply an understanding of variation to the factors that control the production rate and influence the quality, cost and flexibility of processes and systems; understand the role of control in processes and systems, especially in view of the presence of noise (variation); and provide exposure to a range of manufacturing system constraints.

[Description and screenshot taken from MIT OCW page for this course. (c) MIT used under the terms of their CC-NC-SA license.]