Due at 8:00 PM on Friday, March 2
Purpose
The Concept Analysis assignment provides an opportunity to practice analysis used to make conceptual design decisions. The major aspects of this assignment are
- Describe the overall system architecture as you currently understand it
- Identify a critical subsystem for further analysis in the report
- Link subsystem performance metrics to customer requirements and system-level performance metrics
- Systematically compare alternative concepts for fulfilling requirements of the subsystem
- Select the most promising concept for the subsystem
Report
Your team produces a concept analysis report with these parts.
- Title page
- Project Objective Statement
- System (or project) architecture
- Subsystem under consideration (in this report)
- Analysis
- Basis of comparison
- Comparison tools (plots, matrices)
- Conclusion
You can download the rubric as a spreadsheet or PDF file.
The rest of this web page describes the required components of the report
Title page
The cover of your report should have
- Project name
- Sponsor name
- Team members
- Course (ME 492) and due date
This information should be on a separate page.
Project Objective Statement
Using the format and style described in the textbook by Mattson and Sorenson, give a one-sentence project objective statement. See pp. 272-273 in the 4th edition and pp. 296-297 in the 5th edition.
Components
System or Project Architecture
Describe the system-level architecture of your design solution. This architecture may be somewhat in flux at this point, but you should have a basic idea of how you plan to solve your design problem.
As part of your system-level description, include at least one diagram that shows an overview of your project or device. Provide a brief (one paragraph or so) narrative describing this diagram. Consider one or more of these as possible diagrams:
- Block diagram: useful for process-oriented design problems (e.g. 3D systems)
- Functional decomposition: useful for device-oriented design problems (e.g. Red-band traps)
Use a diagram to show how the main components of your design fit together to achieve the desired outcome. This, of course, requires you to identify the main components. Be as specific as possible about the overal function of those components and the system as a whole. The detailed design of the components comes later. At this point in the design you need to be identifying and refining the subsystem requirements for each of the components.
Subsystem Under Consideration
One goal of the report is to demonstrate how your team is working to achieve the overall objectives of the design project. Rather than doing an exhaustive analysis of all subsystems – save that for your final project report – pick the subsystem that is most crucial to your project or a major subsystem that needs to be designed first.
If your project is focused on mechanical or thermal design, the subsystem will be a physical device that is incorporated into your final design. If your project is focused on process design, your subsystem would be a key part of the overall process you are designing.
Given the subsystem that is the focus of this report include the following items relevant to that subsystem
- Identify/List the primary customer requirements and all system level performance metrics affected by the performance of the component
- List additional subsytem-level performance metrics for the component. A subsystem requirements matrix would be useful, but not required
Concept Analysis
Given the requirements for the subystem identified in the preceding section, briefly describe the internal and external search processes used to generate concept ideas for this subsystem. Present a minimum of four (preferably more) alternative ideas for satisfying the subsystem requirements. At least two of those ideas must be designed by the team. In other words, the concept ideas under consideration cannot all be purchased. Note that this does not mean that you must select a concept that you design. Rather, you must not avoid design by listing only concepts that can be purchased.
Develop one or more simple engineering analysis (or performance) models for this concept. All of the design concepts should be able to be analyzed with this model(s). One purpose of the model(s) is to identify and expose overall performance metrics that can be used to evaluate design concepts. Another purpose is to set boundaries on achievable performance for the subsystem and the system as a whole. The model(s) should be relatively simple. Example models are overall energy balances, overall force balances (or torque balances), power requirements, time limitations, and cost models. You will refine these modes later.
Using the simple model, and other metrics, perform screening analysis to select the concepts that are feasible. Possible screening criteria are technology readiness or estimate of lead time for development for each concept, feasibility of completing the subsystem performance goal, estimate of cost for each concept. The purpose of screening is to eliminate infeasible concepts given the current constraints of the project.
For the concepts that pass the screening test, use a concept scoring scheme (Pugh matrix) to quantitatively evaluate and compare the concepts. Present the results in a table, and use the results of this analysis to select one or two concepts for further analysis.
Conclusion
Briefly summarize the status of your concept analysis. Consider some of these questions:
- How does the analysis presented in this report fit into the entire design project?
- How certain are you that the subsystem concept you have selected will be feasible and successful in achieving requirements for the final design?
- What addition work needs to be done to increase your certainty of success with this subsystem?
- What is your back-up plan if this subsystem does not perform well enough, or is not feasible?
- What additional big risks lie ahead? (Those risks may involve other subsystems.)
- What additional resources or guidance do you need?
Appendix
An appendix is not required.
Use an appendix to provide additional documentation to support the analysis in your report, but that would interrupt the flow of report if included in the body. Examples include detailed modeling equations, data sheets, images of CAD models.
Comments about Writing
The quality of the writing will count for 15 percent of the total score. Therefore, make sure you write clearly, use proper grammar and spelling, and use citations for all information not created by the group. Figures and tables should all have numbers and captions. Equations should use symbols, not words, for variables. All physical quantities should have appropriate units.
The text of the report does not need to be extensive. However, any information presented in tables, schematics or graphs needs to be explained in the text. Figures and tables that are not described in the text will be ignored.
Avoid entirely, or keep any big picture descriptions brief: no tangents world peace, game-changing technologies, breakthrough products, winning competitions, etc. Those issues are important, but assume that the readers are already knowledgable and in agreement with you on the significance of your project. Assume that the people reading this document are part of an organization that is familiar with and committed to, and counting on, your success.
What the readers don't know is specifically how you are going to solve your given design problem. Put your effort into explaining your solution as clearly and completely as possible given the state of evolution of your design at this time.