2017 IPD Trade Show: Active Tech, Daily Wear

Six teams of U‑M students — from Art & Design, Business, Engineering, and Information — are competing in this year’s Integrated Product Development challenge. Over the course of the semester, the teams participating in this interdisciplinary course have worked to design and produce an item suitable to be worn routinely in daily life, incorporating the use of active technology, and responsive to user needs in an innovative way.

The annual challenge culminates in the IPD Trade Show on Wednesday, April 5, 2017 from 6 – 8 pm, where the teams present and demonstrate their products to the IPD community and public. Attendees can see the actual products, test them out, and cast a vote for the ​“Best of the Best.”

The products will be available to preview online in March by visiting the IPD Trade Show event page.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Integrated Product Development (IPD) is an experiential, cross-disciplinary course that puts teams of students from Business, Engineering, Art & Design and Information in a competitive product development environment. This innovative course has been featured on CNN and written up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Businessweek. The course is hosted by the Tauber Institute for Global Operations, and is taught jointly by faculty members Eric Svaan of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and Stephanie Tharp from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

In this course, each team acts as an independent firm in competition with other teams (firms). The instructors announce a product class and each team must design and build a fully functional product within that class. The product class is broad enough to allow a wide variety of design solutions.

Each team works through the process of market research, concept generation and selection, technical development, production process design, pricing, inventory stocking, and advertising. Teams must design, build, and compete with a real, fully functional, customer-ready product. Teams compete with their products through a web-based ​“trade show” and a physical trade show. Market shares and revenues are computed based on votes from the public.