Specializing Master in Industrial Design Engineering and Innovation

This Specializing Master joins the artistic and humanistic skills belonging to design culture with the technical know-how that relates to production technology, materials, and manufacturing costs. It strives to meet the need to operate in a worldwide landscape of heightened competition where the designer can increase the value of a product by making innovations – in both aesthetics and usability – that take advantage of available technologies. The aim is to train professionals whose creative capacity is matched by technical expertise and awareness in a product’s industrial feasibility.

Because its faculty is made up of teachers from a variety of fields, from both inside and outside the Politecnico di Milano, the Specializing Master establishes a set of multidisciplinary skills called upon throughout the course of training. Cultural visits to foundations and museums, along with technical field trips to manufacturing companies, round out the training and foster the attainment of educational objectives. Many graduates from previous editions are playing leading roles in major manufacturing concerns or renowned design studios, including: Whirlpool Europe, Chicco Artsana, 3M, Polti, Cini&Nils Lighting, V12 Design, Studio Volpi, Studio Luca Trazzi, Serralunga, Rupes spa, Zinc, Design Group Italia, Toys Toys, Ditronetwork srl. Others have founded and directed their own studio.

Goals
This program aims to train professionals to manage the design and production processes for both small- and large-scale manufactured items, with an expert eye on issues of technology, manufacturing, and cost but without sacrificing features of quality of expression.

Final exam

The final exam requires students to present projects developed during internship. The final grade takes into account assessments during the learning workshops.

Temario:

1 - Computer-aided Design (CAD)
We learn both the theoretical methods and the practical techniques for applying dedicated software to three-dimensional modeling. This includes an in-depth understanding of the issues involved in modelling and in photorealistic rendering. We learn to handle both suface modelling and top-down parametric 3D modelling.
Specifically, we deal with the stages of form development starting from product conception and we develop skills in using engineering software during execution stages of the design that are compatible with rapid prototyping and putting items into automated production.

2 - Processes and Criteria for Designing
This module analyzes the development process in manufacturing enterprises to acquire an understanding of how to manage – at the design stage – all the variables related to planning new manufactured products of medium complexity, with an eye to applying planning systems to industrial production.

3 - Production Processes and Methods
Students acquire the ability to understand and manage the technical, technological, organizational, and financial issues involved in manufacturing processes and the workflow of industrial logistics for medium-complexity products.

4 - Financial Evaluation of a Design
Students acquire the knowledge about the cost of running machinery, tooling up, machining, and finishing that is needed to evaluate the ‘industrial cost’ of a product. They learn to select among possible design solutions, taking into account the project’s economic feasibility.

5 - Quality Control and Certification, Patenting
We learn about certification procedures for manufactured goods and for stages of the production process, as well as the procedures for protecting inventions and a product’s planning value.

6 - Materials and Technologies
This module provides the knowledge and tools that enable designers to understand how manufactured products relate to the materials they are made of, using material-selection information systems such as the design version of the Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES).

7 - Enterprise and Innovation
Objectives include acquiring the main skills needed to organize a product portfolio coherent with company strategy and to organize the innovation process so as to integrate all the corporate skills involved, as well as some know-how for setting up, managing, and verifying the individual development projects for a new product.

8 - Tools for Design-driven Innovation
Defining the concept of innovation led by design.
This involves an in-depth look at design’s contribution to new product development, providing knowledge needed in creating innovative product concepts.

9 - Empowerment
This course contributes to the student’s individual learning process through lessons in self-empowerment, public speaking, and teamwork.

10 - English Language
Improved language skills are needed to work in a corporate or professional environment, both for technical purposes and for managing product development.

11 – Seminars
The seminars led by professionals from the corporate world deal with issues in designing products of medium complexity, in production processes, and in tools for innovation.

Workshops and Product-development Laboratory

The workshops are design simulations on topics identified in the course of training. The Specializing Master follows two sequential workshop phases, in incremental difficulty. This makes it possible to coach students gradually into a growing design awareness. Practical design work wraps up with the Product-development Laboratory, where students learn product-plan execution.

Workshop 1: Product Concept and Layout
In this design simulation students identify usability limitations in specific product categories. They start by analyzing state-of-the-art products and users on the market, in an attempt to uncover unsatisfied needs. Using this analysis, students are expected to design a new product, including layout and determining its main components.

Workshop 2 and Product-development Laboratory: Design and executive development of industrial product
The exercise consists in the design of mass consumption products of medium complexity starting from removal and relief of an existing product. After analyzing and understanding the starting material, students are required to prepare a brief that highlights the possible areas of project. Improvement focus on formal and usability aspects of the product, without ever neglecting the industrial feasibility aspects and methods of assembly. The level of definition of the project is accurate, with great attention to the producibility and the clear identification of all components.

Product-development Laboratory: Executive development of industrial products
Students are called upon to develop the designs laid out in the preceding phase. Specifically, they have to make detailed choices about materials, production processes and logistics, and how to present the design. This must be done with an eye to chances for optimizing product parts for actually putting it into production. Special attention is thus paid to execution design, using parametric modeling software and, where called for, physical modeling and component prototyping.

There will be a strong focus on learning theoretical methods and acquiring the techniques that underlie the use of dedicated software applied to three-dimensional modeling.

Profesorado:

Matteo Ingaramo (Director of the Master)
Director of POLI.design, architect, and industrial designer, Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Milano. He earned his Specializing Master in Strategic Design and in PhD in industrial design at the Politecnico di Milano’s Design School, where he is active in the Progetto&Prodotto research unit, both as director and as a researcher in product innovation with partners like Hawort-Castelli, ASI, Ferrero, Whirlpool, and ANIE. The winner of design and architecture planning awards, he works in both Milan and Turin.

Politecnico di Milano Master's Board: Francesco Trabucco, Alberto Cigada, Matteo Oreste Ingaramo, Raffaella Mangiarotti, Lucia Rosa Elena Rampino, Silvia Deborah Ferraris, Riccardo Gatti, Giuliano Simonelli.

Titulación:

Upon completion of the Specializing Master, students earn a first-level Politecnico di Milano Specializing Master Degree, provided they have met the 75% minimum attendance requirement.

In addition to the degree, the program also issues:

certificate for completion of course in Rhinoceros with software-manufacturer accreditation from McNeel;
certificate for completion of course in CREO with software-manufacturer accreditation from PTC.

Duración:

60 credits ECTS

Fechas:

The Specializing Master will begin November 2020 and will end January 2022.