Today products are manufactured and marketed globally and supply chains have dominated the manufacturing landscape. Most companies have much wider product ranges. These companies are introducing new products more quickly with a sharp focus on the market. As we move into the new century, we need to incorporate these improvements to develop truly agile product development process. There is trend towards a multiplicity of finished products with short development and production lead times. An agile

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... approach to manufacturing faces the reality that we must serve customers with small quantities of custom designed parts with perfect quality, 100% on-time delivery, and at very low cost. Companies are forced to organize themselves in such a way that high quality products can be developed very quickly in response to customer requirements. Globalization of the product design and manufacturing requires its practitioners to master engineering methodologies, cultures, and languages from more than one country. The Internet enables manufacturers to design and produce wherever these can be done most efficiently so that any one globally can be a competitor. Studying best practice used by others and benchmarking them has become a standard procedure. The importance of globalization has also been stressed in the engineering criteria EC 2000 of ABET. The techniques listed in this paper are used by worldclass companies to guide the design, and development of high-quality products in a step-by-step manner using analytical tools and case studies. The paper highlights how a typical product design course should include topics on building a product team, new product creation strategy and process, creative design techniques, impact of globalization on the principles of design for manufacturing, design for disassembly, and ergonomics. In view of the development in lean manufacturing and information technology, emphasis on value stream mapping and its influence on product development are important. The paper concludes by summarizing the special topics that need a focused approach to product design.