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

1. Design for Manufacture – running a low-emissions vehicle group design project –maximising the educational value. Paul Wellington Dept. Mechanical Engineering Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

2. 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

3. Maximising the educational value of design and build projects. • But what about the generic skills: • Communication • Team work • Leadership • Costing skills • Confidence

4. 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

5. Wearne’s 1984 Analysis of Deficiencies of Graduate Engineers. {UK first, Aus in ( )}

6. 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 don’t know anything about teaching those others • They are too hard to assess.

7. 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).

8. Formula Student

9. 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

10. 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. 

11. 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.

12. 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. 

13. 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.

14. 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

15. Formula Student – Dynamic Competition

16. 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

17. 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@imeche.org, T: +44 (0)20 7973 1287). http://www.imeche.org.uk/formulastudent/

18. The Shell Eco-Marathon

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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 (>5,000kpl)

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. The World Solar Challenge. • The Monash Entry SOLution at 1993 Launch

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

26. 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 Australia’s Aurora both averaged >100kph in 2005, leading to a reduction of 25% in solar cell area from 8 m2 to 6 m2 in the 2007 event.

27. The World Solar Challenge

28. The World Solar Challenge

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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.