Design for Manufacture running a lowemissions vehicle group design project maximising the educationa

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Design for Manufacture running a low-emissions
vehicle group design project maximising the
educational value.

• Paul Wellington
• Dept. Mechanical Engineering
• Monash University,
• Melbourne, Australia.

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Maximising the educational value of design and
build projects.

• What skills do we expect of our graduates?
• Technical
• design
• engineering sciences
• maths
• materials
• manufacturing
• ability to apply knowledge to solving real
  problems

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Maximising the educational value of design and
build projects.

• But what about the generic skills
• Communication
• Team work
• Leadership
• Costing skills
• Confidence

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Maximising the educational value of design and
build projects.

• What about Attitudes? Surely we want graduates to
  be
• Ethical
• Seek to minimise risk to workers and users
• Seek to minimise costs
• Seek to minimise environmental harm
• Seek for sustainable designs

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Wearnes 1984 Analysis of Deficiencies of
Graduate Engineers. UK first, Aus in ( )
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Maximising the educational value of design and
build projects.

• So, how much time, effort and assessment do we
  direct to the generic skills and development of
  desired attitudes?
• Often, not very much. Why?
• Because there is too much content to include
  anything else
• We have the technical skills, but dont know
  anything about teaching those others
• They are too hard to assess.

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Maximising the educational value of design and
build projects.

• I suggest that the answer to the previous
  question is in fact quite simple
• Adopt a problem/project based learning model to a
  large scale design project in which the design
  gets built, tested and competes with alternate
  designs
• Such projects include Formula Student (SAE),
  World Solar Challenge, Shell Eco-Marathon
  (formerly Mileage Marathon).

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Formula Student
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Formula Student

• It provides opportunities for students to
  develop and demonstrate their skills, enthusiasm,
  ingenuity and commitment to engineering
  excellence, and for industry to foster close
  links with academia to develop the people
  attributes they need for future success.
• http//www.imeche.org.uk/formulastudent

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Formula Student

• It provides the students with a real-life
  exercise in design and manufacture and the
  business elements of automotive engineering. It
  teaches them all about team working, under
  pressure and to tight timescales. 

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Formula Student

• It demands total commitment, lots of late nights,
  and many frustrations and challenges along the
  way, but the net result is the development of
  highly talented young engineers.

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Formula Student - Why get involved?

• Young engineering students and graduates are
  exposed to marketing, time management, project
  management, team building, budgeting,
  presentation skills, and other management issues. 

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Formula Student - Why get involved?

• Through Formula Student, they develop experience,
  skills and professionalism as hands on
  engineers, with a keen awareness of the often
  competing pressures of performance, cost,
  safety, reliability and regulatory compliance.

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Formula Student - Why get involved?

• The benefit to students is immense and is good
  experience for newly qualified engineers
  preparing to enter a career in motorsport,  the
  automotive industry or many other areas of high
  performance engineering

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Formula Student Dynamic Competition
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Formula Student

• This is a very well structured competition with
  good emphasis on student learning about
  manufacture, costing, team work etc.
• My 2 criticisms are
• While composites and more exotic materials and
  designs are allowed, the emphasis is still very
  much on mild steel tube structures.
• Fuel efficiency carries so few points it has
  obviously not been seen as very important

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New Formula Students Category

• Demonstration Event at FS2007 at Silverstone in
  July This event, to be held for the first time
  in 2007, is open to vehicles using alternative
  fuels and/or alternative technologies. If you
  would be interested in running a vehicle, or
  presenting your ideas for a vehicle of the
  future, in this event, please contact Kate Jones,
  FS Project Leader (E k_jones_at_imeche.org, T 44
  (0)20 7973 1287). http//www.imeche.org.uk/formula
  student/

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The Shell Eco-Marathon
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The Shell Eco-Marathon

• This project does not pose all of the challenges
  of the Formula Student, but does provide the
  additional challenge of requiring students to
  develop the ultimate in fuel efficient cars.

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The Shell Eco-Marathon

• While entries in this event travel much more
  slowly and do not need the same complexity of
  suspension, steering, etc, it does develop many
  of the same technical and generic skills, along
  with the added bonus (especially for females)
  that it really addresses a major social and
  environmental issue.

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The Shell Mileage-Marathon

• Our best performance in the 1980s
• 1984 mpg (1,000kpl)
• World Record
• team Microjoule from St Sebastien/Loire in
  France.
• 10,705 miles per gallon (gt5,000kpl)

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The World Solar Challenge.

• Also addresses major environmental issues and has
  the benefit of requiring major input from
  electrical (and materials, industrial, possibly
  civil) students as well as mechanical.
• Our project involved a truly multi disciplinary
  team students studying mechanical, electrical,
  electronic and industrial engineering, marketing,
  industrial and graphic design, polymer science
  and psychology.

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The World Solar Challenge.

• The engineering roles are fairly obvious, but
  there was scope for marketing to address
  sponsorship and PR issues, graphic design to
  design logos, lettering on the car and
  information brochures and industrial design to
  help with ergonomics of the cockpit and
  developing a concept rendering for a poster used
  for PR and sponsorship purposes.

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The World Solar Challenge.

• The Monash Entry SOLution at 1993 Launch

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The World Solar Challenge.SOLution with only
1,000km to go.
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The World Solar Challenge.

• While the best Monash performance was only 6th
  place out of 24 entries (1987) and a fastest
  average time of 43kph (1990), the Nuna team from
  the Netherlands and Australias Aurora both
  averaged gt100kph in 2005, leading to a reduction
  of 25 in solar cell area from 8 m2 to 6 m2 in
  the 2007 event.

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The World Solar Challenge
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The World Solar Challenge
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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By participating in formal meetings with minutes
  being taken and circulated, students learn
  something of organizational structures,
  procedures and decision making.
• By negotiation of responsibilities and frequent
  contact with other team members, they enhance
  their communication skills and learn to be
  assertive or cooperative as necessary.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By presenting and defending ideas to peers, staff
  and graduates, they learn planning, presentation
  and debating skills.
• By attendance at and discussion in meetings, they
  gain a broad perspective of how their design fits
  into the rest of the project and where and why
  compromises must be made.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By participating in meetings where they develop
  understanding of the complexities not only of the
  construction of the car, but also the development
  of the race team and race process, and
• where informal discussion after meetings,
  possibly in congenial surroundings, can help with
  team bonding and selection of the race team.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By having their design made and assembled, they
  experience deep learning about design for
  manufacture.
• By testing their designed component both on the
  bench and in the car giving a much deeper insight
  into the quality of their design, which may lead
  to subsequent improvement and optimisation.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By requiring careful time planning and providing
  clear (if possible public) deadlines to meet,
  they learn about time and project management and
  motivation.
• By giving them insight into costing processes and
  becoming responsible for designing within cost
  limitations.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• By learning and gaining confidence through
  seeing their design working effectively in the
  finished car or finding solutions if it presents
  problems.
• By presenting their work to a Sponsors Board,
  which helps motivate them to meet deadlines and
  gain insight into real world thinking, and
  confidence to be able to perform for senior
  management.

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Skill DevelopmentSo how are generic skills
developed?

• They have to address real problems, quite often
  under pressure.
• By working with other disciplines, an effective
  approach to real problem solving is developed.
• They develop leadership skills through taking
  responsibility for their own designs.
• They learn to work within OHSE regulations.

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Development of Positive Attitudes.

• Students attitudes will to some extent be copied
  from those of staff.
• Hence, an interest in energy efficiency may be
  promoted.
• Ethical attitudes can be followed.
• Positive attitudes to team work can be fostered.
• Conscientious approaches to meeting deadlines can
  be imbued.

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Summary

• By undertaking projects involving design and
  subsequent manufacture of a product to enter in a
  competition, is an excellent way of motivating
  students to increase their technical knowledge
  and the ability to apply it. However, if the
  group is reasonably large and well structured,
  there is also great scope for students to gain
  diverse generic skills and an insight into
  management.