In the background of globalization, there has been renewed realization in Indian Industry for highly qualified engineering professionals in Quality Engineering, Product Design and Manufacturing. IIT Kharagpur has been quick to identify this need and begin a dual degree program on Quality Engineering, Design and Manufacturing with expertise from a core group of faculty members from Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, and Industrial and Systems Engineering.

QEDM deals with each of the four essential aspects of conceiving, conceptualizing, designing and manufacturing a product that maximizes customer acceptability, is profitable for the producer, and suffers no social or environmental externalities. Traditional engineering design courses cover only some select aspects of the design tasks. The QEDM program, as proposed here, has been designed to impart the skills, competence, and theoretical and experiential knowledge to its entrants. Enrolled through JEE, they will be taught to expertly handle the required tasks end-to-end.

• The 5-year dual degree curriculum in Quality Engineering Design and Manufacturing (QEDM) is offered in two verticals in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Electronics. For each of the vertical, there will be B Tech (Hons) in Engineering Product Design and Manufacturing and M Tech in Design and Quality Engineering.
• The Dual Degree Program is a unique program conceived at IIT Kharagpur to inculcate in students an enhanced awareness of Engineering Design, Manufacturing and Quality issues related either to Mechanical Engineering Products such Automotive Systems or to Electronic Products such as Real-time Embedded Systems. The academic content of the program is accordingly designed to expose the students to most major engineering aspects related to such products including Product Modelling and Development, Design for Quality, Manufacturability and Assembly etc.

Objective
The QEDM program is aimed at imparting its students the required skill sets, knowledge, competence and sufficient hands-on experience to successfully perform in careers that involve determining customer requirements, conceiving the solution, designing the product, maturing it to a prototype, optimizing its performance and designing the process to manufacture it while ensuring superior quality and cost competitiveness of the final product. These steps require sound grasp of fundamentals of technologies, engineering and science, innovativeness, competence in analysis and synthesis, understanding of costing and SCM, and ensuring success for the enterprise in the marketplace. The program builds on about 70% of existing UG courses covered in the three years of B Techâ??with some augmentation, followed by two yearsâ?? specialization, project work and internships to ensure competence in applying the principles learned to develop actual product blueprints and manufacturing systems design and operation. Initially two specialization streams (with maximum scope of design opportunities in India) mechanical and electrical/electronic product design are slated to be launched in the QEDM dual degree program.