What is Holistic Approach to Design Education

Industry 4.0 is the trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and processes. It requires engineers and product designers trained for the challenge. Collaborative design in virtual environment (CODEVE) is a teaching methodology developed for this within the European Global Product Realization (EGPR) course since early 2000. Each year, an academic virtual enterprise of participating European universities and an industrial partner is formed, and students distributed in international teams. Educational and project tasks are performed through virtual communication tools. The CODEVE methodology was tested on design of consumer products, service-driven products, and industrial machinery. Its evaluation was supported by the Erasmus+ funded project called Networked Activities for Realization of Innovative Products (NARIP) from 2015-2017. As explained in this chapter, it enables students to work for industry, encourages them to understand and explore methods related to Industry 4.0, and helps them to overcome barriers of distributed environment.