K/615/1475 Engineering Design - Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate in Engineering

Assignment 1 - Engineering Design Plan

Learning Outcome 1: Plan a design solution and prepare an engineering design specification in response to a stakeholder's design brief and requirements.

Assignment Brief

Scenario:

Your company has set up a new design department and you have been appointed as an engineering designer to work on a design project for the release of a new product.

Your manager requires that you as the designer, produce a professional report for his/her approval, with a view to achieving project funding from the board of directors.

Activity:
To develop your report, you will firstly assume the role of the company stakeholder or client and formulate a design brief for the product or design solution.

The design brief will be the main starting point for the design process and will describe in enough detail the essential elements of the product/design and its main functions that the design is intended to address.

You will then take on the role of engineering designer and develop the design brief into a detailed design specification, after which you will need to compare your specification with a typical published industrial design specification.

Finally, you will need to research project management techniques and develop a Gantt chart (indicating the critical path) for the design activities in assignment A2.

Task:
Your report needs to address the following tasks and labelled them as sections 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6:

a) Design Brief - An explanation of the key requirements of the design brief and how these have influenced the preparation of your design specification.

b) Design Specification - Your design specification should typically include functional requirements, environ- mental conditions, applicable published standards.

c) Comment on the similarities or differences between your specification and an industry standard method of preparing a specification such as BS 7373 or ACCESSFM.

d) Two different project planning techniques that may be used within your project and discuss their ad- vantages and disadvantages. Explain which of these two techniques you have chosen for your project and justify your reasons for doing so.

e) A Gantt chart for your design project, including an analysis of the critical path. Explain the importance of the critical path when managing a project of this kind. The Gantt chart should be shown in the appendices.

Assignment 2 - Engineering Design Project

Learning Outcome 1: Formulate possible technical solutions to address the student-prepared design specification.
Learning Outcome 2: Prepare an industry-standard engineering technical design report.
Learning Outcome 3: Present to an audience a design solution based on the design report and evaluate the solution/ presentation.

Assignment Brief: Scenario:

Your line manager handed you a brief to work on a design project for a new product that is to be released. You developed the design brief into a detailed specification in assignment 1. You are now required to develop the specification into a final design.

Activity:

With the design specification and project plan in place from assignment 1, it is time for the practical aspects of the design project to begin. You should now develop the design to completion and produce a detailed design report and presentation.

Task 1:

As per your manager's requests, you are required to develop the design submit a professional engineering report, which should include the following:
• Title page, this should feature the project title, your name and assignment title - perhaps a nice graphic, if you like (no page number on this sheet).
• Abstract, this is a self-contained summary of the complete report, this should be less than half a page (page number i).
Acknowledgements, this is where you acknowledge support from colleagues, friends, other organisations etc (page number ii).
• Contents table, this lists each section in the document and the page number where that section begins (page number iii).
• Introduction, the introduction states the purpose and goals of your report. A few sentences will suffice here (this is always section 1, and numbered page 1).
Overview of the design specification
• Literature review and research on the possible solutions set by the design specification.
• Preliminary design research you have done of the possible design solutions, including current design solutions.
• Design options and decision matrix
• Detail design, needs to demonstrate
Preliminary design research to establish three possible design solutions

A shortlist and description of three designs options you have developed, with a final, justified selection of the design you wish to put forward (use an engineering decision matrix).
A description of any modelling (physical, calculations or software simulations) that you have produced or which could be produced, explaining with the aid of suitable screenshots, attachments or images their effectiveness in developing the final design.
The design should also be linked back to the design specification, comparing the specification and the design.
The industry standards that the design has to comply with.

• Manufacture, you should include details about how the design would be manufactured. This should also con- sider how well it complies with any regulations, risk management, and health and safety policies.
• Design Review, your final design should consider both its positives and negatives, are there any current limita- tions to the design that would need future consideration?
• Conclusion, this needs to be a clear statement saying that in developing the design you have accomplished the requirements of the design brief and specification.
e•ferRences (no section number), you need to reference all the sour ces of information that you have used in the report.
• Appendices, the appendices can contain any other relevant information you would like to include, you may have as many appendices as you want, each labelled Appendix A, B, C etc. Include a Cause and Effect Dia-gram in appendix A.

Task 2: Include task 2 c) at the end of the design report after the appendices in task 1.

Your manager has come to you and wants you to present your design to your colleagues, they will likely have a lot of questions and suggestions for your design, it is important to be prepared for a Q&A portion of your presentation at the end.
a) Produce a professional engineering presentation for your colleagues (typically 10 slides).

b) Formally present your work to your colleagues, you are also required to produce a video or videos of yourself presenting, the duration of the presentation should be about 10 minutes plus additional time for Q&A.

Note: It is important that you can be identified on the video, so please ensure that you can be seen and heard. MP4 format is preferable, and please ensure that your file size(s) are not overly large (less than 300 MB is preferred). If you do need to submit more than one video file, please ensure that the files are labelled appropriately with order number clearly identified. Also, would you please introduce yourself with full name and course studied.

c) Your manager wants a debrief of the project and would like a short report to read now that the project has concluded. Your report should contain the following:

i. Is there anything that you would have changed if you had not been restricted by the specification or stand- ards? Why do you think design specifications and industry standards are important when producing a fin- ished product?

ii. Read and evaluate your own report, how effective do you think your design report is for producing a fin- ished product?

iii. Explore different methods you could have used to communicate your ideas to the audience. Do you think your presentation was the most effective way to communicate, or would there be a better way to com- municate your design to others?

iv. In future projects would you do anything differently? Based on the feedback given by your colleagues, and your own personal reflection, what recommendations would you make if the project was to carry on fur- ther?