Question: The topic for Dissertation project is "Gear Manufacturing strategy: waste minimization; material efficiency; resource efficiency; and eco-efficiency."

I believe it is the best option for my final project as in day-to-day work as I build gearboxes in the aerospace industry I have to check the gear's quality and efficiency, for example in a batch of 100 gears is probably 15 to 20 gears to be rejected due to the quality issues which cause a massive waste.

That is just in the research you can include that about my workplace to make it a bit more personalized.

Has to include:

-The project proposal consists of three parts: the Project Specification and Plan, the Ethics and Safety Approval Form, and the Risk Assessment.

The Project Specification form describes your project's research aim, the main steps or milestones needed to achieve this aim (the objectives), and a time plan for how you will achieve those objectives. You should include this plan in the form of a Gantt chart. You will need to do some reading here (in universities we call that literature review, I'm sure you've heard of it by now) to support your project idea and the proposed plan. You should also include project costs and the source of locating items/consumables in the progress report with appropriate justification.

You must prepare a Project Plan, containing a breakdown of activities, milestones and deadlines, with a Gantt chart. The plan must be prepared around the assessment deadlines. A reasonable amount of time should be spent planning so that initial objectives can be refined, or redefined if necessary, at an early stage. It is advisable to allocate a significant proportion of time at the start of the semesters to project work.

A Risk Assessment must be completed to assess the risks associated with the project work, especially if it involves manufacturing or testing involving dangerous machinery or hazardous materials. The module leader will talk to you during one of the early sessions about how to complete this.

An Ethics and Safety Approval Form must be completed and signed by the student and submitted as part of the project proposal. The supervisor will then review the form and, if deemed appropriate for consideration by the Ethics and Safety Committee, will sign it and submit it to the committee.

4. Experimentation and Practical Work
Since this is a research project, you'll need to perform some sort of experimental work. This may be simulation-based (as engineers, we should always start with simulation wherever possible) but may very well involve work done in a lab or workshop.

Before commencing any practical work, the Ethics and Safety and Risk Assessment forms, from your proposal, must be approved. Additionally, for each piece of work which requires a lab or workshop, you will need to complete a work order (see the forms pack Download the forms pack) and send it - along with any supporting documents listed in the form - to your supervisor, who will approved it and submit it to the Technical Resources Manager to be scheduled and carried out as soon as feasible.

You should allow plenty of time for this process as the University's technical resources are actively used for teaching, research, and industrial projects. So make sure to submit your work orders as soon as possible.

5. Results and Data Analysis
Another thing to keep in mind with research project: your experimentation must produce some results or data, which you then analyse to draw some conclusion. How you analyse the data depends on the project you're undertaking. You should use what you've learned on your course and literature review to determine this. Your supervisor will also be able to help you with this, either directly or by referring you to another member of staff who possess better suited expertise.

6. Poster Presentation
In many cases during an engineer's career one need to present their ideas, progress, or findings to one or more people. This is usually done using a short presentation accompanied by a slideshow or a poster. In this module we use the latter.

You will present your work twice: once at the end of Semester 1 and once at the end of the module. The exact dates for these events will be published on Canvas. Each time you should prepare an A1 or A2 size poster to show your work. For your first poster you should present your idea, your progress to date, and your plans for the second semester. Your final poster is expected to present your completed work.

When preparing the poster, please keep the following in mind:

The title should be easily readable from a distance of about 3 meters. Body text should be easily readable from about 1 meter distance.

You should make heavy use of figure and graphs, and minimal use of text. Your figures should occupy more overall poster area than text.

Any graphs you use should be informative and helps you get your idea across, avoid using generic images of objects that don't add any information to the poster.

Any text you use must be easy to read and to the point. It's a good idea to make use of bullet points and lists instead of paragraphs. As a guide, word count should not normally exceed 800 words.

7. Thesis and Final Portfolio
After completing your work, you need to produce a final report, or thesis, to document and present all your work, including literature review, experiments, results, data analysis and conclusions. To help you with this task, we've prepared a "Guide to Producing the Level 6 Individual Project Report Download Guide to Producing the Level 6 Individual Project Report" .

In addition to the thesis, you should also submit a digital scan of your entire logbook in the final portfolio.

8. Logbook
You are required to keep a project logbook (a notebook into which the pages are bound on purchase and cannot be removed; normally a hardback notebook). You should record in your logbook everything about your project however draft or rough (including your ideas, findings from the literature review, and details of experiments) as they take place. A carefully completed logbook will be invaluable when you're writing the final report. Your supervisor will sign and date your logbook at each meeting. It is your responsibility to ensure this happens.

9. Project management