Management of Product Development | Master's track

Become an industrial design engineer who knows how to handle the bigger picture of processes and stakeholders in the development of new and better products.

When it comes to designing and engineering products, the final result – the actual product – counts. But how you’re getting there, is at least as important. In the Master’s track Management of Product Development (MPD), you will develop a vision that goes far beyond the product level. You will learn how to effectively and efficiently establish the right development process.

You will become competent in overseeing the whole process behind product development and identify the real problem that needs solving, whether it is a product issue, an issue with the production environment or process, or perhaps a marketing or management challenge. This track enables you to concentrate on the full breadth of the product development cycle, including societal embedding, while still having detailed, techn(olog)ical expertise.

What to expect?

This Master’s track offers you the possibility to analyse, develop, implement and evaluate generic tools and techniques, but also to elaborate them in a selected area of product development. This area can be very specific. For example, a certain type of product, such as a medical device, a ketchup bottle, an aircraft engine or an aspect of the entire development cycle, or explicitly very broad, like an aspect that plays a role in the entire cycle. Therefore, the range of topics is nearly unlimited. To mention just a few: from patents to ergonomics, from design methods to strength analyses or from cost estimation/calculation to implications of Smart Industry/Industry 4.0.

Examples of (elective) courses you can follow during this Master's track:

Investigate and establish the development context for a product in the course Governing Product Development, in a way that you’re not only able to design and engineer a product but can engineer and steer the development process as well.
Learn how to use cutting-edge 3D modelling and simulation software to perform your own research project on, for example, additive manufacturing, process and production planning or medical implant design in the course Advanced 3D Modelling.
The course Virtual Reality enables you to integrate virtual reality and augmented reality techniques in all fields of engineering to support decision-making by use of, for example, digital twins and the Internet of Things.

What will you learn?

As a graduate of this Master's track, you have acquired specific, scientific knowledge, skills and values, which you can put to good use in your future job.

Knowledge
After completing this Master’s track, you:
- know how to handle the development of a product while simultaneously exploring possibilities to improve the product development process;
- have an overview of development methods, tools and techniques that improve and balance applicability, feasibility and viability of products, products-service-systems and their development cycles;
- have expert knowledge in specific fields/aspects of product development and you know how to purposefully and efficiently acquire expertise in related fields.
Skills
After successfully finishing this Master’s track, you are able to:
- are able to reason, reflect and form a judgement on a product’s design in its current and future context and on the related development cycles;
- can research, plan, adjust, customise, and steer development projects;
- can purposefully employ new (technological) research, approaches, tools and techniques to improve development cycles and the resulting product designs.
Values
After completing this Master’s track, you have:
- developed a multi-perspective, context-dependent and versatile approach for product development;
- understand the ways in which to address and integrate the many perspectives, aspects and stakeholders involved in product development and its industrial, technological and societal context;
- have developed your own unique identity as a product developer.

Other master's and specialisations

Is this Master’s track not exactly what you are looking for? Maybe another IDE-track will suit you better, or take a look at these master's and their specialisations:

Master's in Mechanical Engineering
Master's in Industrial Engineering & Management

Courses & research