MECH 3064

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MECH 3064 Design Project Guideline

Course Projects
Project work is an essential component of the learning experience in the course on product design and development. We have experimented with many types of projects. This section presents ideas on setting up and managing student project activities. General Project Guidelines We like to have the students produce a physical prototype of their products by the end of the course. As a result, we insist that the products be simple. Following are the guidelines to the students: There should be a demonstrable market for the product. One good way to verify a market need is to identify existing products that meet the need. Your product need not be a variant of an existing product, but the market need addressed by your product should be clearly evident. The product does not have to have a tremendous economic potential, but should at least be an attractive opportunity for a small firm. The product should be a material good and not a service. Although many of the ideas in the course apply to services (e.g., customer needs and product architecture), many do not (e.g., design for assembly). The product should have a high likelihood of containing fewer than 10 parts. Although you cannot anticipate the design details, it is easy to anticipate that an electric drill will have more than 10 parts and that a garlic press will probably have fewer than 10. The product should have a mechanical or electrical/electronic control system. Products with software control is also acceptable. You should be confident of being able to prototype the product for less than Rs10000. Please check the availability of components in the lab. If parts you require are not available and you need to order the components, these should be done before week 6 so that you receive the components for assembly on time. The product should require no basic technological breakthroughs. (Yes, a more compact airbag would be a nice, but can you do it without inventing a new chemical?) We do not have time to deal with large technological uncertainties. You should have access to more than 5 potential lead users of the product (more than 20 would be nice). 1

MECH 3064 A few more hints:

D S Callychurn 2013

Save any highly proprietary ideas for another context; we will be quite open in discussing the projects in class and do not wish to be constrained with sensitive information. The most successful projects tend to have at least one team member with strong personal interest in the target market. In most cases we shall have multidisciplinary team members for the project. It is really nice to have a connection to a commercial enterprise that may be interested in the product. A good source of project ideas is to ask business people you know what products they would really like to have. Most products are really not very well designed. We are continually amazed at the seemingly poor quality of common products (utility knives, garlic presses, and ice cream scoops, for example). Our experience is that if you pick almost any product satisfying our project guidelines, you will be able to develop a product that is superior to everything currently on the market. Generating Project Ideas We have used three types of projects: student-conceived projects, industrysponsored projects, and faculty-specified projects. Student-Conceived Projects In our experience students can easily generate a set of interesting ideas for design and development projects. We ask each student to prepare a one-page written proposal and a 60-second oral presentation. In the first or second week of the course, the students hand in their proposals and make their oral presentations.. After listening to the presentations, the students fill out a "project preference card." This card requests project and team member preferences as well as information on the skills and background of the student. We then form teams based on both the project and team-member preferences expressed by the students. We tell the students that if they wish to work with specific classmates, then they should all express identical preferences on their project preference cards. Assuming the group is relatively well balanced in terms of skills, we generally allow such teaming. We have also allowed students to form their own teams in an unstructured or semi-structured fashion. One year we asked the students to simply "form teams of six students" after they had listened to all the project proposals. Another time 2

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we had the students first vote to select the eight best projects, then asked them to form teams around those eight. Of the approaches we have tried, the project preference cards and subsequent team formation by the faculty seems to work best, but we would not be surprised if a better approach emerges in the future. Team Formation, Budgets, and Other Logistics Teams seem to work best when they contain from three to five students, although we often have up to nine students on teams in larger classes. Ideally the teams would all include mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering students, Generally we provide the student teams may be provided with a small budget to pay for project materials. However there are strict deadlines for ordering of materials which should be observed. Missing deadlines may lead to non approval of the budget in which case students may have to fund their projects on their own. In such cases, students will be allowed to take back the components they have purchased after the completion of the module. Prototypes We require students to create a physical prototype of their products. Ideally this prototype would be both a "looks like" and a "works like" prototype. In many cases, especially when the students adhere to the project guidelines, this is possible. In some cases, the students are not able to create a "production-intent" (or alpha) prototype. This is often because the product involves complex surfaces that would be very expensive to prototype in a form closely approximating the production version of the parts. In this and similar cases, the team may choose to create two separate prototypes, one exhibiting the appearance (for example) of the product, and the other demonstrating its functionality. Final Presentations We have always required final project presentations by the students. The primary benefits of a final presentation are that it forces the students to construct a coherent story about their product, it forces some reflection on the process and outcome, and it helps to share the project experience with the rest of the students in the class. When scheduling presentations during regular class hours, we have generally used the final three sessions of the course. We ask the students to prepare a 15minute presentation using whatever media they would like and to demonstrate their prototype hardware. Allowing for 5 to 8 minutes of discussion and 2 to 5 3

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minutes for transitions between groups, each presentation requires 25 minutes of class time. Project Assessment During the course of this module, you will be required to submit assignments at regular intervals. Assignments allow us to keep track of your progress in the project and to address any difficulties you may be facing. Please keep us informed of major problems in undertaking your work. Waiting for the last minute may not be useful. Assessment will be based on the following structure: Assignments One end of semester test Presentations Report Prototype and Demonstration 10% 20% 10% 25% 35%

Each team member will be rated during the assessment by peers and by the project leader. There will be a raporteur who will submit a report, supported by records on a log book, on the commitment of each team member during the course of the project. The report structure to be used for submission of the final writing up together with the drawings in appendices is as shown below: Project Report Structure Title Page Acknowledgements Table of Contents List of Figures and Table Abstract Introduction Background Information Problem Formulation Aims and Objectives Methodology Concept Generation 4

MECH 3064 Customer Needs QFD Product Design Specifications Concept Selection Presentation of alternative concepts Selection criteria Final concept for prototyping Detail Design Drawings Material Selection Design for Manufacturability Economic Analysis Prototyping Details of work undertaken Achievements Conclusion Bibliography References

D S Callychurn 2013

In the course of the project you may use any of the following tools and techniques to justify your work. Tools and techniques 1. Conceptual design a. Need identification and data collection i. Market research (tools and techniques used) ii. Customer surveys iii. Journals, codes and standards, library, research institutions iv. Brainstorming v. Focus groups b. Data Analysis i. Affinity diagram ii. Pareto chart iii. Nominal Group Technique iv. Value engineering/analysis v. Cause and effect diagram (fish-born diagram) vi. Quality function deployment matrix (House of Quality) c. Generating Alternative solutions i. Functional and direct decomposition ii. Pugh concept selection and evaluation method 2. Material selection 5

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3.

4. 5.

6.

a. Most common engineering materials properties b. Material selection using Ashby charts and performance criteria Material processing a. Processing metals and their alloys b. Plastic processing Parametric design using guided iteration Other aspects of design a. Patents, contract, copyrights, Trademarks, Code of ethics for engineers b. Design for reliability and safety (guidelines for design for safety) c. Green design d. Failure mode and effect analysis e. Common failure modes of mechanical components Detail design (Design presentation) a. Presentation using AutoCAD/SolidWorks or other design software b. Communication of design (report)

Project Scheduling You are advised to stick to the project schedule given below to be able to Week 1 Week2 Design Project Introduction Team Constitution and Presentation of Project Titles; Selection of projects Submit Project Title and Team Details and Work Plan Conduct market needs analysis Submit Product Design Specifications and QFD based on market needs analysis. Conduct desk research. Conceptual Design and Generation of Alternatives. Desk research and finalise design alternative Manufacturing considerations Ordering of materials and components Submit Assembly Drawings of Existing and Proposed Model (Detail Design) Prototype construction Prototype construction 6

Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8 Week 9

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Week 10 Week 11 Week 12

Prototype construction Report Writing Report Submission Presentations & Discussions

Week 14 & 15