How Everyday Things Are Made

OckNock writes "The Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford University in conjunction with Design4x has released online courses on design and manufacturing that include over 4 hours of streaming video (Flashplayer required). Some of the topics include airplanes, crayons, and waterjet cutting. If only they had this when I had studied mechanical engineering - maybe I would have stayed awake in class more."

Comments

Take a look at

[AchmedHabib]

Take a look at http://www.howstuffworks.com/. There's a lot of explanations for just about anything.

Re:great stuff!

[PurpleFloyd]

Sorry, but process engineering is a dead field right now. Many companies are cutting "improvement" departments like process engineering and IT to the bone because they don't directly produce end products; middle and upper management often look down on divisions that don't do "real work." While companies doing this are essentially shooting themselves in the foot, most of manufacturing is cutting back or eliminating entirely divisions that serve to improve productivity. Since they're not directly related to product output, they get cut first and the company doesn't suffer immediately.

Also, what makes you think that an out-of-work sysadmin or programmer would be qualified? All the process engineers I know have spent many years working on the shop floor in their industries, and know the processes involved like the back of their hand. If they can't find work, what hope is there for someone who walks in from what is essentially a completely different industry?