As Texas A&M’s Institute for Innovation and Design in Engineering (IIDE) turns 20 years old, it is important to reflect on the value of providing ready-made engineers to an industry that survives by its ability to innovate.

At this milestone for the IIDE, I want to discuss the successful partnerships between members of the oil and gas industry and our methodology for teaching product innovation, design, and entrepreneurship in the mechanical engineering department. At our beginning, we were one of about five universities in the US that incorporated product innovation in the curriculum. Today, we are but one among many.

Our objective is to instill, through practical examples and industry exposure, the ability to identify the ambiguities of technical issues and to reach consensus through demonstrating creativity, complexity, choice, and compromise. Our strength stems from the industrial sponsors that have supported projects ranging from systems for the activation of drillship heave compensation and rugged all-metal insulation that provides flow assurance in subsea environments to “rotatable” coiled tubing (CT) drilling rigs that greatly increase CT life and levitated bearings that extend equipment life in extreme high-pressure/high-temperature subsea completions.

Industry sponsors provide students with advantages, including engineering support to define the project, guidance during the design process, and professional critiques during design reviews. Sponsors can also benefit from access and exposure to our students and gain fresh perspectives from students who have not yet learned what can’t be done.

Our teaching of the technological tools with which to design and build occurs over a four-step sequence that begins during the initial two years, when the classical, inter-disciplinary concepts are established. Following the science knowledge base of mathematics, physics, chemistry, or biology, students are taught the application tools which, for mechanical engineers, include structural materials, structural mechanics, structural dynamics, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics.

The second process involves multidisciplinary concepts, or the process for combining inter-disciplinary methodologies to provide innovative products for a broad range of applications.

An entrepreneurial concept is the third piece of the puzzle. Students are introduced to commerce and examples of societal interactions with technology. The marketing process and business planning are introduced along with the concept of intellectual property — patents/trademarks, and non-disclosure agreements. Along with a separate course in ethics, the Design for Innovation segment includes examples of ethical lapses in the design process. Additionally, the broad subject of health, safety, and environment is discussed. The ambiguities involved with political issues are also addressed, such as both the science and the technology of global warming or congressional legislation as it pertains to drilling and refining hydrocarbons.

The innovation process itself is the fourth component. The design continuum is developed with numerous examples for addressing the ambiguities of technical decisions in both commercial and societal context. The senior Cap Stone Design course includes an initial semester of product innovation, followed by a semester of detail design and entrepreneurship. Students develop three or more viable conceptual proposals from a genuine product need provided by an industrial sponsor. The sponsor’s selection of one of the “proposed solutions” is developed during the detail design semester that follows. Students are divided into small design teams for both semesters and are managed by a design studio faculty. Our students often learn that as much actual innovation occurs during detail design as was developed during the product conceptualization process.

Industry sponsors provide the glue that binds our current program together. By funding projects, these companies provide engineering reality for young engineers and teach students how to interact with practicing engineers and others provide direction and coordination with the necessary tasks. The relationship of the student design team compares to that of outside consultants, with the design studio faculty serving as the chief consultant, who provides direction and guidance, but neither initiates nor performs engineering tasks.

Confidentiality agreements are executed, and past projects have led to new products as well as patentable concepts. Project attributes that enhance the educational value to our senior students and technical value to our sponsors include market prospective, solutions to technological challenges, and client personnel interaction.

The IIDE methodologies that are taught and applied to product innovation can be easily applied later to similar industry problems, whether marketing, manufacturing, or field services. The exposure received by our students, clearly instills character, leadership, and professionalism over their careers.

C.A. “Buddy” Bollfrass is a mechanical engineer with almost 50 years experience in the oil and gas industry. He is a lecturer with Texas A&M’s Institute for Innovation and Design in Engineering.