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Abstract Physical systems and products are being designed with information sensing capability and network connectivity to exchange data and decisions in real-time and across the life-time of the system or product (SoP). This architecture and capability provides engineers opportunity to integrate early in the design and development phase of the SoP, robust mechanisms to monitor and ensure that the SoP operates in expected ways and also be resilient to cyber-threats. The scale of the SoP is large ranging from electrical grid systems to a smart thermostat as an example. The field of product life-cycle management has a long history that has been developed for business management practices. The adaptation of these principles in the context of the emerging aforementioned cyber-physical systems (CPS) is presently being studied with particular focus on addressing the impact of SoPs on the environment and on ethical issues related to data collection and use. Two applications are considered in this work to highlight the relationship between CPS and Life-cycle Management (LCM). One relates to the design of a sensor network for monitoring air-pollution in various communities and the second addresses the LCM of a complex system, the aircraft engine. Graduate students are charged to co-create an educational module on how LCM concepts are being considered in these applications by interviewing experts in these two fields. To accomplish this, students are provided direction on posing questions and strategies for communicating in interdisciplinary groups with the goal of providing an engineering student audience an insightful introduction to life-cycle management and the need for careful consideration of this process in their future research, design and development roles. A particular focus is on designing the module such that it can be integrated in a subset of existing courses in the undergraduate engineering curriculum and techniques for LCM identified in the context of the course topic. This work investigates a novel model for curriculum enhancement that is student-centered and student-driven building on the techniques of project-based learning, co-creation and participatory action research in collecting and integrating information from experts implementing LCM of new and legacy technologies.
Paradorn et al. (Thu,) studied this question.