Notes
Slide Show
Outline
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Engineering Design
Follow the Process ® Be Efficient
Manage the Design
® Be successful
  • Dr Ahmed Kovacevic
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City Formula Student Results
  • 2002  joined competition for the first time.
    R02 Finished  39th out of 40. Photo
  • 2003 motivated and supported by the university.
    R03 Finished in 32nd place out of 38, 24th in design Photo
  • 2004 well supported by both university and external sponsors. 
    R04 Finished 44th out of 54 with shared 37th place in design Photo
  • Problems:
    • Poor understanding of team member/officer duties
    • Confusion over who was responsible for work
    • Lack of communication, Not equal share of the work
    • No schedule of tasks or understanding of the dependence of tasks
    • Budget problems?!
    • Project Management & Understanding of the Design Process
  • Expectations for the future:?!
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OBJECTIVES
  • Formula Student Team
  • To develop following skills:
      • Project management
      • Team behavior
      • Decision making
      • Communication
      • Collaboration
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Engineering Design Process
  • Design – structured problem solving activity


  • Process – phenomenon of making changes to achieve a required result


  • Design Process – cyclic continuous activity
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Design Process Timing
    • All projects have time constraints


    • An adequate planning leads to a satisfactory project finish
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Customer (Examiner) Satisfaction
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The Engineering Design Process
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Teamwork and Personality Preferences
  • Working in Teams
    • Today, most new products, systems and processes are produced by teams
    • Teams bring together people with different strengths to generate a better product
    • Individually created items tend to be from a past era
    • Most of products are multidisciplinary
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Influence of activity styles
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Working in teams
  •  Stages in Team Development
  •  Team Member Responsibilities
  •  Team Leadership Structures


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Team Development Stages
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Team Development Stages
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Team Development Stages
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Team Development Stages
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Team Members Role:
  • Each member of a team has a specific role to play and must fulfill his/her role in order to make the team successful…
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Team Member Roles:
  • Team Leader
  • Team Member
  • Recorder (AKA Team Scribe)
  • Treasurer
  • Design Engineer
  • CAD Technician
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Team Leader Responsibilities:
  • Track team’s goals and achievements
  • Communicate team’s progress and needs to both the team and management (instructor)
  • Remove barriers in team progression
  • Take care of logistics (arrange for meeting rooms, time, group supplies)
  • Run all meetings
  • Help to resolve conflict
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Recorder (Scribe) Responsibilities:
  • Take meeting minutes
  • Maintain Design Notebook
    (will be discussed)
  • Maintain copies of all pertinent paperwork
  • Assist Team Leader as needed
  • Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!
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Treasurer Responsibilities:
  • Handle all financial issues
    • Receive check
    • Cash check
    • Maintain funds
  • Keep team leader informed of financial status
  • Keep team members informed of financial status
  • Maintain all receipts for purchases of materials, supplies, etc.
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Team Member Responsibilities:
  • Focus on the purpose of the team
  • Focus on team goals vs. personal goals
  • Work to develop an atmosphere of trust and respect
  • Listen more than you talk
  • Communicate clearly
  • Participate fully
  • Make realistic commitments and keep them
  • Respect (not necessarily like) your fellow team members
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Team Member Responsibilities:
  • Be open to others’ ideas
  • Give others your full attention
  • Actively listen
  • Don’t get mad if the team doesn’t use your idea
  • If you have an idea, be able to support that idea
  • Criticize constructively
  • Accept constructive criticism
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Team Leadership Structures
(AKA Organizational Charts)
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Team documents and meetings
  • Design notebook
    • Team working agreement
    • Meeting agendas and minutes
    • Design memos
  • Planning and conducting meetings
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Design Notebook
  • Used for documentation of project
  • Example items for Design Notebook
    • Disk with all information
    • Copies of all pertinent information
    • Meeting agendas
    • Meeting minutes
    • Team working agreement
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Team Working Agreement
(Team Ground Rules)
  • Referring to the agreement made at the formation of a team
  • All members of the team should sign and date the agreement
  • Keep this agreement in your Design Notebook with your graded work and other materials
  • Expand your working agreement later if the need arises
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Examples of Ground Rules
  • How decisions will be made
    (i.e. majority, consensus, team leader, etc.)
  • Attendance at team activities
    (meetings, regular schedule class periods, etc.)
  • How work will be divided
  • Consequences of failed actions
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Example Team Working Agreement
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Meeting Agenda Items
  • Items to be discussed
  • Person or people leading the discussion for each item
  • Desired outcome of each item
    • List of ideas or options
    • Shared understanding
    • Priorities
    • Decision or recommendation
    • Action Steps
  • Estimated time for each item
  • Meeting Evaluation
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Design Memos
  • Memos (memorandums) are one of the primary means of communication between employees and supervisors
  • Two primary reasons to develop good memo writing skills:
    • Communicate information clearly and logically
      • Have clearly written sentences
      • Avoid features that detract from the content (e.g., misspellings, incorrect grammar, rambling statements…)
    • Present a positive impression of yourself and your abilities
      • This may be the only “meeting” with you that your reader has
  • Format of an appropriate design memo is next…
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Team Meeting Process (5-Steps)
  • Plan
  • Start
  • Conduct
  • Close
  • Follow-Up
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Team Leader Role at Meeting
  • Open the meeting
  • Review agenda and make changes as needed
  • Have recorder/scribe track notes and time
  • Facilitate discussions
  • Guide team
  • Lead meeting evaluation
  • Gather ideas for next meeting
  • Close the meeting
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Managing Design – Project Management
  • Design is an activity that can consume significant time and resources
  • This lecture outlines various techniques that allow a team to manage and control a design project
  • The 3Ss of project management:
    • Scope
      • To know the goals and to accomplish them
    • Spending
      • To complete the project within the specified budget
    • Scheduling
      • To finish the project “on time”
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Project Management Approach
  • Managing the design process consists of four functions:
    • Planning
      • Define scope, schedule and spending (the 3Ss)
    • Organizing
      • Determine who is responsible for each project task
    • Leading - Motivate team by showing that
      1) tasks are fair
      2) division of work is fair and
      3) level of work produces satisfactory progress toward goals
    • Controlling
      • Relies on a sound plan to measure progress and take corrective actions
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Project Management Tools
  • Work breakdown structures (planning, organizing)
    • Determines scope of activities
    • Hierarchical representation (like a family tree) of all tasks
    • Work is “broken down” into pieces small enough to estimate resources (£, number of persons) and time required
  • Team calendar (planning)
    • Shows time available to the team
    • Highlights deadlines
  • Gantt chart (planning, organizing)
    • Horizontal bar graph mapping design activities (and their duration) against a timeline
    • Shows parties responsible for activities
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Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)
  • WBS is considered the most important management tool for design projects.
  • It decomposes overall task into smaller, more manageable subtasks.
    • As a simple example, consider a spacecraft design:
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Work Breakdown Structures (1)
  • Observation 1:
    Each item that you take to a lower level should be always broken into two or more subtasks
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Work Breakdown Structures (2)
  • Observation 2:
    Break down an activity until you can determine
    > how long it will take and > who will do it
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Work Breakdown Structures (3)
  • Observation 3: WBS should be complete in the sense that
    any activity that consumes resources or time is included
  • Observation 4: Any part of the hierarchy of tasks should add up
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Team Calendars
  • A mapping of deadlines (given to you) onto a traditional calendar
  • Also include team -generated deadlines for tasks in the WBS
    • Becomes an extension of the team working agreement
    • Include recurring or routine activities such as team meetings
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Team Calendars
  • Points to keep in mind:
    • Team calendar should be reviewed at each meeting
    • Times on calendar should be consistent with WBS


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Gantt Charts
  • The Gantt chart is named after a well known industrial   engineer, Henry Laurence Gantt
  • During World War I (1910s), he studied manufacturing processes and labor utilization to improve the productivity of munitions factories
  • A Gantt chart is an easy-to-use, valuable Project Management tool
  •   It shows, in one table:
    • Tasks to be completed
    • Persons responsible
    • Start, duration, and end times/dates
    • Activity precedence (what has to be done first, in what order)
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Gantt Chart Example
  • For scheduling, it is critical to understand the precedence relationships between tasks
    • Sequential tasks - Task 1 must be finished before Task 3 can begin
    • Parallel tasks - Tasks 3 and 4 can be undertaken simultaneously (or in parallel)
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Budget: Show Me the Money
  • Design project budgets consist of:
    • Research expenses
    • Materials for prototypes
    • Materials for your “final” product (really, it is still a prototype)
    •  Value of design team time
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Value of Design Team Time
  • A simple algorithm to estimate value of design team time
    • Costteam = Moverhead * Costdirect
    • Moverhead is a multiplier that covers fringe benefits, supervision, profit and facilities costs to the organization
    • Costdirect is the money/pay that you, the designer, would see in a paycheck
    • Typical values: Moverhead = 2 – 4
      Costdirect = £15 – 50 /hr
  • Even at a minimal wage (£5/hr) for a design team of
    five for ten hours a week for ten weeks,
    the cost is £5000-10,000


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Conclusion on Budgets
  • Make initial estimates of your budget for
    • Research expenses
    • Materials for prototypes
    • Materials for your “final” product
  • For value of team time, keep records of hours spent on the project throughout the semester
    • The bottom line on the value of design team time:
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speaking as a designer
committed to building better product
better = more efficient
“a better learning experience”
“learning-from-working”
“working-to-learn”