Version:
Course website: www.me.umn.edu/courses/me4054/
Rooms and Times: Lecture: FraserH 102 (Tu, Th 1:25pm to 2:15pm)
Team meetings: STSS 312 (Tu,Th 2:30pm to 5:30pm by assignment)
Schedule: Use link on course website
Course Staff (see Staff section of web site for contact information and office hours):
Coordinators: Prof. Brad Bohlmann, Prof. Will Durfee
Teaching Assistants: Zach Rzeszutek, Courtney Podritz
Administrator: Tori Piorek
Prerequisites: ME 2011, ME 3221, ME 3222, ME 3281,
ME 3321, ME 3322, ME 4031W, AEM 2021, AEM 3031, EE 3005 or equivalent
All of these courses or their equivalents must be completed before beginning
this course. If you have any exceptional circumstances where you have not completed
all of these classes, you must discuss your situation with the instructor in
advance.
Reference Textbook: Ulrich, K. T., and Eppinger, S. D., Product Design and Development, Fourth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2007. (Each team will receive one copy on loan for the semester. Also available for purchase on-line.)
This class is the capstone design class. "Capstone" because it draws on all of your other engineering courses. You will go through an open-ended design project experience similar to what you can expect on your job, following graduation. The lecture series will present a process which will enable you to identify the optimal solution to such open-ended problems.
Put yourself in the shoes of a design engineer working in industry. Consider your advisor and the course staff to be your managers. They will approach you with the need for your team to develop a new product or process for them. This should be exciting experience. However, the situation may feel uncomfortable at first, as it will differ substantially from most of your prerequisite classes. There is no solution in the back of the text book and not even your team advisor knows the optimal answer. They have contracted you to find it!
You may find it unnerving if you ask your advisers what to do next, and they reply, “I don’t know, you figure it out!” Or you may ask your advisers if your calculations are correct, and they reply, “I don’t know, you tell me!” But that is life for a working engineer; when you are working an open-ended design problem, you can not go to the back of a textbook and find the answer to the problem. Indeed, in the real world it is often the ability to define the problem properly that plays a critical role in the ability to develop a solution. Your manager may not have the technical expertise to validate your models. Nevertheless, you have to prove to them that your work is correct.
The lecture series will present a formal process for design that we expect all teams to follow, regardless of your specific project topic. This includes writing a product specification, generating many solution concepts, selecting an optimal concept, and developing the best concept in detail. This process will give you the means to prove quantitatively to your advisers that your design is the best possible. Competing in a global economy requires such a process.
Learning effective project management, team work and group coordination is an important objective of ME4054W. While you might be able to deliver a good design without considering how the project is managed or how to effectively use every team member, the output, and your grade, will be much better if good management principles are followed.
The “W” following the course number indicates that it is a writing-intensive class. This means you will receive instruction in how to write like an engineer, will do a substantial amount of engineering writing and will get a chance to revise some of your engineering writing. In addition, the quality of your engineering writing will factor into your final grade. Whether formal, informal, draft or final, please pay attention to your writing. Most importantly, think of the audience and purpose each time your fingers reach for the keyboard.
Most students take this class during their last semester. You are expected to apply the modeling and analysis skills that you have developed in your prerequisite classes in the design process. For example, if your product involves some sort of structure, those beam models that you learned in AEM 3031 and ME 3221 are likely relevant. You are expected to support your project with all appropriate analyses, and document them in your final report. This will help you to earn a high course grade.
Your project advisor will probably not tell you what analysis to apply, but rather will expect you to determine when analysis is needed and what analysis to use. Nevertheless, your adviser will expect you to know what you are talking about. Look for opportunities to put your background classes to work for you. Your team might also assign some of your members to learn more about certain technical subjects to properly appraise your designs.
The course schedule is summarized on the course website. The class meets as a whole for the lectures shown on the schedule. The bulk of the course work, however, is concerned with your design project and the rest of the time on the schedule, plus time outside class, is spent working in your project.
The design projects are tackled by the class design teams and overseen by the individual project advisors. The advisors may be a UMN professor or may be an engineer from the company sponsoring the project. The advisor meets with the team weekly. The role of the advisor is to advise, not to lead.
Your progress is tracked by way of the on-line project task tracker, design notebooks, mid-term design review, project site visits, the design show and the final report. These items are described later in this document.
ME4054W is a writing intensive course. Some of the documents that will be written during the semester include your design notebook and the sections of your team's final report.
Project descriptions are posted on the class web site. You express your project preferences by completing on an online form (see schedule for due date and time). Students are assigned to teams by the course staff based on preference. You will generally get one of your choices, but even if not, you will land on a good project. Teams are typically four to six students and one or two advisors.
Your team will have a peer leader, a position that is permanent or rotates, based on the preference of your team or your advisor. The team leader is responsible for running effective team meetings, which means creating an agenda, keeping the meeting on track and ensuring that all voices are heard.
Brief minutes are taken at each meeting. Assign a scribe for this task. Most importantly, minutes must record decision made by the team and action items assigned to individuals. Minutes must be posted on the team web site by midnight of the meeting day. If your team leadership rotates, the scribe for this week becomes the leader for the following week.
You will organize project work using a Work Breakdown Structure. From this you will create tasks. Every task will have a deliverable, due date and responsible person. Deliverables are either a report (brief technical report, brief powerpoint slides, set of CAD drawings) or a physical prototype. More information on how to organize project tasks will be given in the project management lecture.
Each team has a project website to use as a collaborative workspace. Use the site to store working documents, post required course deliverables and to track task progress. More information on the project swebite will be provided in class. Sites are hosted by Google Sites.
The University of Minnesota's policy on intellectual property (IP) is that IP is owned by the University when it is created by students while using University resources. Patentable IP created by students during their work in this course will be owned by the University, but the student inventors will be shown as the inventors. If patentable IP is created by students during their work in this course, a disclosure form should be completed and submitted to the University's Office for Technology Commercialization (OTC). The process for reporting IP to OTC and the intellectual property disclosure form can be found by clicking on the "REPORT an invention" icon at: http://www.research.umn.edu/techcomm/.
OTC will briefly review the IP disclosure and if the student-generated IP does not involve UMN faculty or staff or existing UMN IP, the University of Minnesota will assign ownership of the IP back to the students. If a sponsor company wishes, it can have the students sign a standard agreement at the start of the course stipulating that student-generated IP will be assigned to the company.
A series of deliverables are required from all teams throughout the semester. They are summarized on the Course Schedule. You can find details on each by clicking on the "Assignments" link of the course web site. All deliverables are uploaded to the team's project web site and must be uploaded by 11:59 PM on the due date (see the Google Sites handout for details about where to upload assignments). An exception to the submission of assignments via your team's Google website is the design notebook deliverables. Design notebooks are submitted directly to the advisor.
Every student is required to keep a design notebook for recording all of their work in the course. Learning to document the evolution of your design in a notebook now will serve you well when you are out in the real world working as an engineer. Patent litigation is sometimes decided based on documentation in design notebooks.
Your notebook will be evaluated by your advisor twice, once after the mid-term project review and once after the design show. Specifics on what type of notebook you need and what you should put in it are in the "Assignments" section of the course website. The design notebooks will be kept by the Mechanical Engineering Department at the end of the semester.
The mid-term project review is a chance for you to give a formal oral presentation about your project. Your team should approach it as if this was a presentation to the management of your employer. Most teams are expected to be largely finished with concept selection by the time of the mid-term review and beginning on the detailed design of the product. The reviewers will want to know what alternative designs you considered and your basis for rejecting them (or continuing their development late into the design cycle). Modeling and analysis is expected to support concept selection. Equally important, the reviewers will want to know your plan for completing your design.
The project review gives your group a chance to obtain feedback on your design from people in addition to the project advisor. After the group has presented, the audience is given an opportunity to ask questions. You will be rated on your progress to date, your plan for the rest of the semester, the content of your talk and your style of presentation.
An Oral Presentation Workshop is held before the review to help you be an effective speaker. More information on the review and a sample evaluation form are posted in the "Assignments" section of the website. Along with attending your review, you are required to attend the presentations of at least two other teams presenting on the same day.
Your project team will meet with a "site visit" team twice during the semester. The team may consist of the course coordinator, the teaching assistant, your advisor, and one additional advisor or industrial representative. Their objective is to see if your team is on track. Details on the focus and deliverables for the site visits can be found in the "Assignments" section of the course website.
The Design Show is an exciting way for your team to present its final results. Groups show off their designs in trade show format, including poster presentations. The show is open to the public and attendance is usually enormous. Deans and department heads often attend. Your project will be assessed by judges drawn from the faculty and local industry.
Please encourage your friends, family, classmates and coworkers to come see your project results at the Design Show. Detailed information on the show and a sample evaluation form are posted on the web site.
The largest contributor to your final grade is a comprehensive final report. This report must thoroughly explain and justify your final design to a reader who has an engineering background but may not be familiar with your project. Expectations for the report are provided in the "Assignments" section of the course web site. Because ME4054W is a writing intensive course, you will receive feedback and a grade on several draft sections of the report. Incorporating the suggestions into your design and final report will to help you improve them.
Your final grade will depend on both individual and design team performance. This means your grade depends not only on how well you do as an individual designer, but also on how well your team members do. Grading is based on performance, not on effort.
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Grading Criteria |
Grader(s) |
Contribution to Final Grade |
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GROUP CRITERIA: |
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Final Report |
Course Coordinator |
20% |
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Final Design |
Advisor, Design Show Judges, Course Coordinator |
10% |
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Design Documentation (drafts of report chapters) |
Course Coordinator |
15% |
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Project Plan |
Advisor |
10% |
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Oral Presentation/Communication |
Advisor/Course Coordinator |
10% |
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INDIVIDUAL CRITERIA: |
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Knowledge of the Design Process (midterm exam) |
Course Coordinator |
10% |
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Assessment of Design Notebook and Google Site Tasks |
Advisor |
15% |
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Course Participation |
Course Coordinator |
5% |
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Individual Contribution |
Peers |
5% |
The criteria for assessment of the team, in order of importance, are:
The criteria for assessment of individuals within the team, in order of importance, are:
Your team will get a letter grade based on the project results and the team deliverables. This grade will be A, A-, B+, etc...
Your personal grade will start with the team grade, but may go up or down from the team grade based on your contribution to the project and your individual deliverables. For example, if your team receives a B+, your grade will likely be anywhere between a C+ and an A. For another example, if your team receives a C for the project grade, it is extremely unlikely that you will get anything above a B for your own grade no matter how good your individual performance was. So what you should conclude from the grading policy is that it's to your benefit to make sure you have a high performing team.
Truly abysmal individual performance will rate a C, D or F, no matter what the team grade.
Each student will be different. Some will excel by doing excellent analysis, some by building an awesome prototype, some by writing reports, and some by taking on effective team leadership roles. The bottom line is, did you contribute, did you apply your engineering skills, and did you stretch yourself during the semester.
It is a sobering thought to imagine that you might have received a B if evaluated only on your own work, but were dragged down to a C because one of your team members was not pulling their weight. The opposite can also happen where you soar up to an A because you are a member of a particularly powerful team. Although this method of performance evaluation may sound unusual, in fact it is exactly what happens in the real world. Your team would do well to conduct periodic internal reviews of the team's performance and to help those members that for any reason are lagging behind. Your advisor can help in this process or you can contact the Course Coordinator.
Although there may be minor grading variations across groups, we make every effort to maintain an appropriate level of consistency. It is not productive to compare your grade to that of someone in another group because each project has different objectives, deliverables and team dynamics. The best thing you can do to ensure a good grade for yourself is to put in the hours (from day 1), to work as part of the team so that the sum is greater than the parts, and to make use of all that you have learned from your extensive training as a mechanical engineer.
Approximately mid-way through the semester, your advisor will grade your design notebook and the results of an anonymous peer evaluation of your contribution by other members of your team will be provided to you.
Scores and grades will be posted on the course Moodle site, which you can get to from your MyU page.
You are required to attend and actively participate in all class sessions. This will be assessed through your participation grade.
You are expected to be available to work on your project every Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30 - 5:30 PM. You do not have to meet with your team for that entire time, but you should be available to your team if necessary. You may work on independent sub-tasks such as researching concepts in the library, running models in the computer lab or prototyping in the Student Shop.
If you have a job, do not schedule to work at times which require you to leave class before 5:30 PM. Do not schedule any other classes that overlap ME4054 time.
This is a four credit course so the expected time commitment is 12 hours per week or 180 hours for the 15 week semester. The group meeting time on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon qualifies as a portion of this time.
The course does not have an imposed structure like most. How you invest your hours will depend on your project. Be cautious about letting time slip away early in the semester because the design show seems far away. You should be nearly completed with a thorough concept selection process by the time of the Mid-Term Design Review, including some modeling and prototyping. You are advised to police your time to make sure you are dedicating yourself at an appropriate level for each of the 15 weeks.
Your design team has many resources available to it for use including equipment, assembly space and the student shop. See the Resources section of the course web site for details.
See the "Expenses" section of the course website for instructions on obtaining funds for prototypes for your project. Never spend personal funds on project expenses before receiving approval for the expense if you expect reimbursement. The course does not provide funds for preparing mid-term reviews or your design show booth.
Students will not be penalized for absence during the semester due to unavoidable or legitimate circumstances. Such circumstances include verified illness, participation in intercollegiate athletic events, subpoenas, jury duty, military service, bereavement, and religious observances. Such circumstances do not include voting in local, state, or national elections. For complete information, please see: http://policy.umn.edu/Policies/Education/Education/MAKEUPWORK.html.
Students with disabilities are welcomed in ME2011. The University is committed to providing quality education to all students regardless of ability. Determining appropriate disability accommodations is a collaborative process. You as a student must register with Disability Services and provide documentation of your disability. The course instructor must provide information regarding a course's content, methods, and essential components. The combination of this information will be used by Disability Services to determine appropriate accommodations for a particular student in a particular course. For more information, please reference Disability Services: http://ds.umn.edu/Students/index.html.
As a student you may experience a range of issues that can cause barriers to learning, such as strained relationships, increased anxiety, alcohol/drug problems, feeling down, difficulty concentrating and/or lack of motivation. These mental health concerns or stressful events may lead to diminished academic performance and may reduce your ability to participate in daily activities. University of Minnesota services are available to assist you. You can learn more about the broad range of confidential mental health services available on campus via the Student Mental Health Website: http://www.mentalhealth.umn.edu.
Academic freedom is a cornerstone of the University. Within the scope and content of the course as defined by the instructor, it includes the freedom to discuss relevant matters in the classroom. Along with this freedom comes responsibility. Students are encouraged to develop the capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and independent search for truth. Students are free to take reasoned exception to the views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion, but they are responsible for learning the content of any course of study for which they are enrolled.*
Reports of concerns about academic freedom are taken seriously, and there are individuals and offices available for help. Contact the instructor, the Department Chair, your adviser, the associate dean of the college, or the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the Office of the Provost. [Customize with names and contact information as appropriate for the course/college/campus.]
* Language adapted from the American Association of University Professors "Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students".
The course faculty hopes this course ends up being an excellent learning experience for how to tackle a large, ill-defined design project. The course has been developed over the years by many faculty in the department with particularly valuable contributions from Professors Chase, Hubel, Simon, Mantell, Bohlmann, and Durfee. The course faculty coordinator welcomes any comments or suggestions you have for improvements both during and after the course.
Design well!
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