Description
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Team Project – Specifications
MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
Objectives
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Develop students’ ability to analyze a problem and formulate a solution description in technical
terms
Guide students through the process of analyzing problem stakeholders and needs
Develop students’ ability to conduct information searches and to use data to support decisions
and arguments
Reinforce course concepts regarding teamwork and project management
Project Overview
One of the key steps in the development of an engineering project is to analyze the initial problem,
determine what the needs of the solution are, and then to formulate the needs into clearly defined,
actionable, and quantifiable DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS that communicate the requirements of the
solution to all stakeholders. Depending on the problem and the needs of the stakeholders, these
specifications may stem from physical requirements of the problem, preferences from stakeholders,
technical limitations of resources, regulations or industry standards, or any number of factors that drive
the project needs.
This project is part research report and part persuasive document – you are required to connect
concrete supporting information describing the PROBLEM to your TEAM’S INSIGHTS. One of the key
challenges of this project is how far your team can see beyond surface level details and to persuade
your audience that YOUR TAKE on the problem will lead to an optimized outcome.
The project begins with the basic prompt of a design problem and requires the team to develop a
FORMAL technical report outlining the technical problem details, design specifications, and related
justifications for the identified design requirements. It is important for the team to remember that you
are NOT PRESENTING A DESIGN CONCEPT. You are being asked to define the requirements for the
solution through specifications. Make sure you answer the correct question!
DO NOT PRESENT DETAILS ABOUT SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS OR PARTS.
This project STOPS BEFORE “GENERATE/SYNTHESIZE CONCEPTS”!
IF your team states, “our concept…,” “our design…,” or “our selected
parts…” in this document, you have ANSWERED THE WRONG
QUESTION.
Project Problem
Recent events have cast a spotlight onto small crew manned submersible vessels and their safety in the
civilian sector. These vehicles can be used for a large variety of applications, such as marine and subsea
structure inspection, reef and wildlife inspection, and subsea terrain exploration. While unmanned
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Team Project – Specifications
MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
submersible vessels exist in research and some commercial settings, manned submersible vessels are
much rarer and require significantly higher design thresholds for the safety of crew aboard.
Your team is part of an institution developing draft design requirements for solicitation of a small crew
manned submersible vessel. To communicate your team’s perspective on the problem, your insight into
what’s required for success, and what will best address the concerns of the committee reviewing the
bid, your team has been tasked with developing specifications for a new marine/subsea exploration
vehicle that will accommodate a crew of 2-3 people. At this point, your institution only has plans to
solicit proposals from bidding companies based on the specifications your team sets.
Due to the wide range of potential applications, your team should provide clear details how you have
determined the physical requirements of the problem, the application requirements, and stakeholder
needs that must be considered for a company to fulfill a project to execute and operate such a vessel.
Specifications Requirements
The final set of DESIGN specifications should present clearly defined, actionable, and quantified
descriptions of the physical and/or technical requirements on that can be used by bidding parties to
develop and submit their design concepts. The list of specifications should be comprised of
MEASURABLE physical parameters and the target/range of values that are acceptable for the
proposed demonstration kit. REMEMBER – to describe the design requirements, you need to think
about:
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From researching the problem, what are some of the key physical challenges or constraints that
need to be overcome?
What are the conditions that the device will be operating under and how does that change the
requirements of the design?
What do you believe are the priorities in the technical challenge of the problem? What unique
insights do you have that can improve the outcome?
Other than the operation of the device, what other portions of the life cycle of the device force
specific requirements on the solution?
Are there regulations, standards, or rules that might state specific requirements on a part of the
work? Do you want to stick to what is stated or go beyond?
And much more! You are REQUIRED to use CREDIBLE external sources (such as journal articles,
textbooks, and governmental databases) to SUPPORT your specifications and to convince the
instructors that these requirements will lead to a good solution.
The specifications should be organized in a way that reflects the reasoning and justification used to
develop the list. Teams are encouraged to group individual specifications together into categories help
to demonstrate how they fit into the stated needs presented in the Specifications Justification
Also make sure that your team is NOT listing existing specifications of similar device or of components
you think could go into the device.
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MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
Specifications Technical Report
The team will submit a formal, technical report in Word (*.docx) format presenting not just the final
specifications themselves, but more importantly the reasoning, thought process, and justification behind
the final set of specifications. The content outlined below is expected as part of the team’s fulfillment of
the assignment requirements to present and explain your selected design specifications – the list below
should NOT be treated as a check-list for completion of the assignment.
Writing quality will account for 10 points for the formal report. Please make sure the team is following
the technical writing and reporting style guidelines taught in your Technical Communications course.
The report has 2 major written sections: Needs and Specifications Justification. The DIFFERENCE
between these sections is that the Needs section describes what you have learned about the
background problem and highlights the challenges and key DATA that defines the basic physical
requirements for a solution. The Specification Justification breaks YOUR INSIGHTS on the needs into
further detail and defines the COLLECTION of PHYSICAL requirements and QUANTIFIED LIMITS YOUR
TEAM is setting for an acceptable solution to the problem. The Justification section explains and try to
convince an audience that your collection of design requirements make sense in terms of addressing the
problem you described in the Needs section.
The report will be no longer than 4.5 body pages, single spaced and inclusive of figures, with the paging
limitations outlined below.
Introduction (1/2 page)
The purpose of this section is to Introduce the team’s basic perspective on the problem and the team’s
approach to the logic. Present to your audience what your team sees are the major challenges and
priorities in the problem, as well as outline the team’s key points of focus and the major problem needs
the team will try to address through the specifications. Your team can introduce some background
information here but try to keep details of the specific challenges within the given problem to the next
section.
Provide an overview of the organization of the specifications, as they relate to the needs, so that the
audience builds an expectation of your order of logic.
When you write this section, please assume that the audience already has a copy of the original problem
statement. You can paraphrase the general problem but avoid copying the problem statement
verbatim.
Problem Details and Needs (~1 page)
The purpose of this section is to demonstrate that the team understands what the PHYSICAL problem
entails and has CONCRETE DATA that builds a set of ACTIONABLE criteria as foundation for the final
detailed specifications.
To present your understanding of the PHYSICAL problem, layout the results of your team’s RESEARCH
work on the key background PHYSICAL description of the problem and it’s context, TECHNICAL
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information relating to key challenges identified, and STANDARDS in related applications. This
background information should include:
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Physical DATA that DEFINES or describes the circumstances of the problem or application.
ACTIONALBLE Constraints/limits that make development of the solution CHALLENGING.
Existing research that informs ACTIONABLE quantification of “fuzzier” or less obviously physical
criteria.
Concrete DATA that supports the team’s prioritization or focus on specific issues or challenges
within the larger problem.
Concrete data that DEFINES how key stakeholder requirements need to be met.
Criteria from existing engineering standards that help to understand the industry’s view on the
problem and standard practice.
** Note: DATA and QUANTIFICATION appear multiple times above. Concrete NUMBERS that provide
the details of the physical parameters you’ve identified as part of the problem are REQUIRED. Just
provide the general idea of concerns in the problem are INSUFFICIENT.
** Note: while this section addresses the broader supporting data of the problem, the team’s
PERCEPTIONS of the needs and PRIORITIZATION of challenges is a key aspect of the evaluation of this
section. Your team is expected to go beyond surface level physical traits of the problem and to present
INSIGHTS into the challenges with the biggest impact on the solution and why the team believes the
solution should focus on those impacts. This is a test to see if your team has useful insights to what will
dictate success of a solution and if you understand the challenges ahead.
** Note: ACTIONABLE is written in all caps and bold above. Your team is required to frame your
knowledge of the problem in terms of constraints described in a way that can be verified and measured
in later phases of the design and execution.
** Note: Please note the use of the word DEFINE in the criteria for this section. We are not asking for
general descriptions of issues. You are being asked to provide specific details that provide a clear
picture of physical thresholds and boundaries that define the requirements of the problem.
Teams are required to utilize DATA and EXTERNAL SOURCES to define what the team believes are the
key physical challenges or constraints in the problem. Suggested data sources include, but are not
limited to:
a. Engineering and scientific journal articles (accessible through UH Libraries).
b. Government regulations and databases.
c. Research publications and databases of CREDIBLE institutions.
Poor quality sources include:
a. Wikipedia (Hint: You can look at the REFERENCES section of the article for quality
sources, though).
b. Commercial websites that are selling specific products or services.
c. Personal blog/opinion pages.
d. Product aggregator/comparison sites.
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MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
Requirements and Specifications Justification (~1 page)
The focus here is on presenting the FINAL QUANTIFICATION OF PHYSICAL PARAMETER LIMITS that the
team is specifying for specific physical requirements on the design. This DIFFERS from what is presented
in the previous section in that:
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The previous section described the problem; this section breaks down details of how the team
has interpreted key aspects of the problem to INDIVIDUAL, SPECIFIC, PHYSICAL criteria that the
SOLUTION must satisfy or meet. One need may require MULTIPLE specifications to be fully
addressed.
The constraints/limits provided in the previous section provides the “minimum” requirements of
the solution; based on how the team views the problem, what range is acceptable in THIS
SOLUTION and WHY based on the TEAM’S INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA
The constraints/limits of the problem may differ from the GOALS and TARGETS of the team;
present the FINAL quantification of the team’s selected physical parameters and explain WHY
that value was selected.
In this section, the team is providing a further detailed breakdown of their logic behind the final
tabulated set of design requirements. After understanding the problem, the team needs to
demonstrate that a clear set of criteria, DESCRIBED in detailed, specific ways that can be VERIFIED in the
design and validation phase, is provided so that the design can proceed with clear checkpoints and
requirements. The team explains in this section how the needs presented in the previous section has
evolved to a longer, more detailed set of specific criteria that a design must satisfy to create what the
team believes is a solution that appropriately balances the team’s design priorities.
** Note: RESEARCH is still expected to support the team’s decisions here, especially if a need requires
multiple physical criteria to completely describe the verifiable design requirements. Explain how the
quantification of the acceptable specification values was determined based on your RESEARCH and what
the expected outcome (IMPACT) of the values is on the project needs.
** Note: Please AVOID RESTATING THE NEEDS section with some tweaks on the numbers mentioned.
The expectation for this section is that you will be able to identify more specific requirements for the
solution after considering what it means to satisfy the needs presented in the previous section.
For the NEEDS and JUSTIFICATIONS section, pointing to similar devices
as “justification” is INSUFFICIENT!
We are asking YOU to explain why certain physical criteria are what
they are!
Make sure you provide both the physical descriptors, the acceptable ranges, and the WHY behind the
selected range. Teams should discuss the physical and technical descriptions the team has selected in
their specifications list and how these points reflect the prioritized needs of the solution – it should be
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MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
clear how the needs presented in the previous section has evolved to the details provided in the
Specifications.
Table of Specifications (1 page)
This section will present the final table of design specifications defined by the team. Present a full page
table of the final list of specifications, with at minimum one column of the individual specification
parameter names and one column with the quantified, acceptable values with units. Each item in the
specifications table should be a description of a specific physical aspect of the solution requirements.
Avoid bundling multiple items together in a row.
** Note: In class, we discussed acceptable and unacceptable Specification descriptions. Please make
sure your final set of specifications keep in mind the following:
a. Each specification should describe a narrow, specific, physical parameter stated with clear
physical units and a QUANTIFIED limit or range that the provides the requirement.
b. Each specification should be clearly ACTIONABLE in the completion of the design.
c. General descriptions of concerns or qualitative needs are NOT specifications.
d. Avoid providing data that simply describes something else that already exists, such as:
a. Specifications of specific models of components
b. Physical properties of specific materials
Conclusion (1/2 page)
This section should summarize the key points made by the team regarding the key problem needs, and
the decisions the team has made to address the needs. Direct SUMMARY of key quantities related to
the problem and quantities defined in the specifications should be given, showing that the team
understands priorities and the biggest challenges of the problem. Teams should reiterate key points of
focus for the final design team and why those points have been prioritized.
References (Not included in page limit)
Teams should use formal source citation in the body of the document. References can be recorded in a
formal style (ex: IEEE, APA, Chicago, etc…) of the team’s choosing, but the team must be consistent. The
quality of the references will also be evaluated.
YOU will NOT be developing a design. Your SPECIFICATIONS will be
used by other people to develop their design.
For the other team to develop a solution, YOU need to DESCRIBE THE
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS of the solution.
Deliverables and Due Dates
The final deliverables for the team are:
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Team Project – Specifications
MECE 2361 – Introduction to Mechanical Design
• Formal specifications report (Due: March 9 @ 11:59pm, uploaded to Canvas once per
team)
• Peer Evaluation (Due: March 9 @ 11:59pm, completed by EACH member of the team
and submitted through Microsoft Forms)
Related to this project, but graded as separate assignments are:
• Design Notebook – Stakeholder and Needs Map (February 13 @ 11:59pm in Design
Notebook)
Grading
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Specifications Report
90%
Peer Evaluation
10%
Individual Team Member Deduction – a deduction of up to 20% on the final project
grade may be taken in the case of lack of contribution to the team project
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