New Perspectives in Science Education

This paper reports on our experience in adopting Lean Management principles [1, 2] in the student engineering laboratory “Schluckspecht” at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences. The laboratory’s purpose is to provide students with the space, equipment, and materials needed to design and build an automobile for maximum fuel efficiency [3]. As seen from the annual worldwide energy-efficiency Shell Eco-marathon results, the students’ attempts were quite successful. Unlike the vehicles, the efficiency and resource-saving of the laboratory itself were questioned only recently, and by one the students. This became the starting point for his master's thesis [4] and our subsequent research. Using Lean Management, which rooted in automotive manufacturing, as an improvement method, we aimed to find a way to reorganize the laboratory so that its operational efficiency was self-maintained at a sufficient level and did not burden the employees and students with additional time-consuming tasks. Given the laboratory's long operating hours and students' flexible schedules, we needed a comprehensive approach that affected not only the laboratory itself but also students’ perceptions of working in the laboratory. The implemented changes impacted three key aspects—physical, cognitive, and affective—and this paper presents an assessment of those changes.