Customized and Group Programs for our Partners

We offer custom-tailored Summer and Winter Schools to our partners.

BENEFITS

✓ Individual scheduling
✓ Customized topics
✓ Institute and company visits
✓ Tailored social and cultural activities
✓ Certificate from RWTH Aachen University

Each program can be customized according to your requirements and may include academic as well as social events, e.g. company visit, institute visit, intercultural workshop, city excursion and museums (Bonn, Cologne, Maastricht) etc.

Please refer to the topics’ descriptions for a general overview of the programs.

Quickfacts

Study format:: Summer & Winter Schools
Duration:: 2, 3 or 4 weeks
Scope:: minimum 50, maximum 120 Teaching Units
Conditions:: B.Sc./B.E. or M.Sc. student, minimum age 18 years
Qualification:: RWTH Aachen University certificate, including list of modules and workload, grade if applicable Credits may be awarded by the sending institution with reference to the students’ certificates and optional grading papers
Language:: English

Price Structure

Customized Format	Duration	Planing & Conception	Course fee per student
Summer/ Winter	2 weeks	5,000 EUR	3,200 EUR (basic)
Summer/ Winter	3 weeks	7,500 EUR	4,800 EUR (basic)
Summer/ Winter	4 weeks	10,000 EUR	6,400 EUR (basic)

_{The price structure is subject to a minimum of 15 students participating at the individual program.}

CURRENT TOPICS (INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO)

Agile Innovation

Academic Content
The core area of study of the Summer School is Agile Innovation. The lectures provide students with an introduction to established cutting-edge methods, processes of product innovation, development design methodology, and product life-cycle management. The theory taught will be applied in a case study featuring the analysis and improvement of a real life product.

Theory of Design Methodology
In respect of the complexity of today’s mechatronic and cyber-physical products, competition on global markets and changing user needs, the development of new products becomes a challenging process. Design research aims at supporting industrial design engineers by providing methodologies, methods, tools and recommendations to bring innovative product ideas into market. In this program, students receive an introduction to well-established methods and processes of product innovation, development design methodology and product lifecycle management. Based on procedural design methodologies, students will learn how to carry out market research, identify and evaluate requirements, set up functions and their structures, and to derive and vary concepts for product innovations.

Case Study
Theory taught in the lecture will be applied in a case study featuring the analysis and improvement of a real life product. During the case study, the main task of the students is to apply their scientific and engineering knowledge to innovate the product within the requirements and constraints set by material-, technology-, environment- or human-related considerations.

First, students determine the usage scenarios of the product and derive related requirements. During the analysis phase, a technical tear-down of the product is combined with a functional analysis to identify the products architecture. In the product planning phase, based on a market research and the application of heuristic and systematic methods, the students develop innovative concepts to enhance the user-feeling in a specific use scenario. Finally, these concepts will be transferred into a suitable embodiment design using conventional and agile methods including rapid prototyping technologies.

Automotive Engineering

Automotive Engineering
The fundamental module Automotive Engineering 1 deals with the motor vehicle and its significance for today's passenger and freight traffic in comparison to other transport systems. The vehicle, its history and its impact on the environment are considered as a whole.

The focus of this course is on vehicle longitudinal dynamics. The individual driving resistances are presented as well as their calculation. The course covers the components and parameters that influence the driving and braking of a vehicle. This includes the conventional powertrain consisting of combustion engine, transmission, differential and tyres. In addition, brake systems will be presented which are used in today's passenger cars. The examination of energy consumption in the automotive sector rounds off the topic of longitudinal dynamics.

Alternative and Electrified Vehicle Propulsion Systems
The advanced module Alternative Vehicle Propulsion Systems covers alternative concepts for the propulsion of road vehicles. The importance of alternative drive concepts for the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions as well as the potentials and challenges are discussed. During the course the different alternative drive concepts will be presented. On the engine side, these include unconventional designs of internal combustion engines with the consideration of alternative fuels (alcohol, natural gas, hydrogen) as well as gas turbines, Stirling engines, fuel cells and electric drives. Furthermore, the different types of continuously variable transmissions and power split drive structures will be discussed. Regenerative drives such as electric drives, pressure accumulator drives, flywheel drives and hybrid drives are another focus of the lecture. The different structures of hybrid drives will be taught as well as fuel cell and battery electric vehicles.

Automated Driving
The advanced module Automated Driving aims to teach the technical basics of (full-)automated driving. The topic "automated driving" is structured and a general overview is given. This includes the history of automated driving, a current evaluation of its social aspects, the social framework in which automated vehicles are developed and used, the legal framework as well as the economic challenges and potential benefits. The different levels of automation and connectivity of automated vehicles are explained according to different classification schemes. A functional architecture of automated vehicles will be introduced. An insight into the current state of developments is given. In addition, the various components of the sensors required for automated driving will be presented, and the computer-aided processing of the data collected by the vehicle will be explained. Within the framework of a case study, the acquired knowledge is applied to independently develop automated driving functions in a test environment and to test their functionality.

Engineering

Information Technology

Negotiations & Supply Chain Management

Strategic Negotiations
The first part of this program focusses on strategic negotiations. Students will explore the following topics: Negotiation case, strategic decision making and human behavior, setting the stage for negotiations, managing constraints and trade-offs, managing hidden information, tactics, traps and pitfalls, and strategies for action and reaction. During this part, students familiarize themselves with basic strategic and psychological foundations of decision-making, get a better understanding of intercultural differences in a negotiation process, become familiar with basic quantitative assessment criteria in negotiations, and understand the role of a mediator.

After the lectures, students will be able to characterize the nature of a negotiation process, develop an individual systematic guideline to conduct a negotiation, moderate a negotiation between third parties, set the stage according to the nature of a negotiation, anticipate potential outcomes of a negotiation, adapt the strategy during a negotiation, and help other parties to prepare for a negotiation.

Finally, a transition is made to the topic supply chain management by looking at leadership as an essential dimension of successful management.

Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management deals with the alignment of customer demand on the one hand and with the ways to supply the requested products and services in an effective and efficient way on the other hand. The objective of this course is to familiarize students with some of the relevant choices that have to be made in order to achieve this alignment and the trade-offs present in each of those decisions. The course will be highly interactive and will contain a lot of intensive and fun teamwork.

On Days 1 and 2, we will be “exploring the fundamentals”, giving a short overview of the main principles and building blocks of the Supply Chain and working on those in detail. We will pay attention to differences between industry sectors and countries, thus making use of the diverse cultural and professional backgrounds of the students.

On Days 3 and 4, we will work on “mastering the fundamentals” with an integral activity centered around "The Fresh Connection", a business simulation game about a loss-making virtual company that needs to be rescued from disaster. Students will play in teams and take care of aligning demand and supply, in other words, decision making in the areas of sales, operations, supply chain and purchasing. Decisions will be implemented in the business simulation tool, so that the results can be seen after calculation. Since all teams play with exactly the same market circumstances, results between teams can be objectively compared, which gives a nice competitive touch to the activity.

On day 4 we will also spend some time on “imagining beyond the fundamentals”, by taking a look at potential impacts that some of the most relevant trends and developments in business and society might have on the supply chains of the future.

Quality Management

Robotics