AE207: Engineering Design

Description: Designing requires the knowledge of science and also some practical experience as nothing goes exactly by the paper. It is an open ended problem, the solution being subjective and always having a scope of improvement. The best we can do is get as much closer to perfection as possible. Designing anything involves the consideration of many factors (like aesthetics, availability of resources, cost of the product, usefulness, deciding the targeted audience et al) and optimizing the various trade-offs. Designing is not always about creating new things, it can also mean a better way of making something so that it is cost effect, energy effective, can be used widely or using something already invented for a different purpose by making some small changes. Seeing the complexity of the issue it is necessary to define an ideal path that should be followed while coming up with a new product. This course will teach you that.

Credits:

6 (2L-2T-0P-6C)

Prerequisites:

None

Course Contents:

Background and introduction: Importance of engineering design, life cycle of a product, engineering design process.
Overview of engineering design process: Steps involved in the design process, communication during the design process, team behavior and tools, Delta design exercise.
Identification and understanding of customer needs: Requirements capture, development of product design specifications, quality function deployment (QFD) technique, case studies in QFD.
Concept generation: Generating engineering specifications, functional analysis and design, concept generation methods, creativity and problem solving, creativity method, creative idea evaluation, TRIZ, axiomatic design.
Concept evaluation: Information representation, concept evaluation overview, evaluation techniques based on 1) feasibility judgment, 2) GO-NO-GO screening, 3) technological readiness, 4) basic decision matrix (Pugh’s Method).
Cost estimation: Cost categories, methods of cost estimation, cost indices, cost capacity factors; activity based costing, learning curve.
Economic decision making: Time value of money, cost comparison, profitability of investment, sensitivity and break even analysis.
Professionalism and ethics: Laws, contracts, liabilities, intellectual property, professional behavior, ethics

Motivation:

Designing is fun. But it’s completely pointless if we can’t make something real out of the design. Very often users use a product in a way never intended by its developer and unintended uses are something that don’t come out in questionnaires or surveys. These are problems that would be faced by you when tomorrow you start working no matter what is your field. Thus, it’s engineering design, which is important and not just designing. The course is more about intuitions, instincts and common sense than anything else. Through case studies and the various concepts taught this course will give an industrial tough to your education here.

Resources:

More than anything, listening to class lectures should suffice for this course. Hobby reading might be interesting too

Text Books:

Dieter, G. E., Engineering Design: a materials and processing approach, McGraw Hill International Series, 2000.
Ullman, D. G., Mechanical Design Process, McGraw Hill, 2004.
Ulrich, K. T. and Eppinger, S. D., Product Design and Development, Irwin McGraw Hill, 2000.
Eide,R., Jenison, R. D., Marshaw , L. H., and Northup L. R., Introduction to Engineering Design, McGraw Hill Basic Engineering Series and Tools, 1998.

Hobby Reading:

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
Stay Hungry Stay Foolish – Rashmi Bansal
I have a dream – Rashmi Bansal

Internet Resources:

Tip: Start of with wikipedia.org for very basic explanation and then try to figure out good resources from the references given at the end of that page.

Wiki

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