Senior Design

Purpose:

The Senior Design, or Capstone, course is the culmination of four years of engineering technology education where students bring together their technical and non-technical knowledge towards the completion of a product design project. One unique aspect of the Senior Design projects at the Department of Engineering technology is that design teams are composed of students from different Engineering Technology disciplines including Mechanical, Manufacturing, Environmental, and Electrical Engineering Technology.

A single design project will be assigned to each design team. The design projects involve designing a product per customer requirements and fabricating a functional prototype. The design teams are expected to follow the systematic product development steps including requirements planning, conceptual design, embodiment design, and detail design.

The projects are solicited from external sponsors who can act as both potential customers for the project and project advisors.

 

Catalog Description:

Senior Design course deals with application of technical and non-technical skills and knowledge using a multidisciplinary team-based approach for solving real-world problems related to product and process development. The topics include systematic product development, development of business plans, project management, cost estimation, documentation and presentation, prototyping, fabrication and concurrent engineering.

 

Course Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the Senior Design course, students should be able to:

  • Apply the knowledge of systematics product development process to open-ended design problems 
  • Apply engineering design methodology, using both analysis and synthesis, to solve open-ended problems.
  • Understand implicit and explicit customer needs and effectively map them to product specifications
  • Generate and evaluate alternative design concepts
  • Fabricate engineering prototypes to validate design concepts
  • Develop an understanding of the economic, environmental, and social impacts of products design
  • Communicate effectively about design requirements, features, and specifications.

 

Evaluation:

Students will be evaluated based on five criteria:  presentation and communication, teamwork, design product, design process, and design knowledge with different relative weights.  The instructor and project sponsor will participate in evaluation process

 

Design Knowledge: The lecture session focuses on providing information about design tools, design process, and design terminology. Student’s knowledge of systematic design process will be tested through a single midterm exam. There will be no final exam for this course.

Presentation:  Presentation involves both written and oral communication.  There will be one interim report and one final report.  The reporting on the project should be professional (clear, concise, and correct) and should be structured appropriately based on the given instructions.  Also, teams have to submit weekly executive summaries based on the given format. There will be one midterm presentation and one final presentation per project. The sponsor will attend both presentations.

People:  Peer evaluations will be critical in evaluating the team and individual performance.  Teamwork will be monitored throughout the project with expectations that each member be able to identify a specific deliverable for which they are primarily responsible. 

Product:  The final solution will be evaluated from a technical and economic viewpoint. The solution should be well justified through supporting documentation and analysis.

Process:  The design process will be evaluated based on the appropriate application of design tools and whether or not the design team would be able to successfully apply the process to a different design problem.  An important learning outcome from this course is the realization that engineering design is not accidental, but can be a controlled process that yields higher quality solutions.