Course Overview:
Engineering Design and Development (EDD) course is my fifth Project Lead The Way course, in which i am currently enrolled. EDD brings together all concepts previously developed in PLTW as students are tasked with the year-long project of going through a real engineering design process in identifying a problem, designing a solution, and developing and testing this solution. Below are descriptions of some of the major tools I have learned about and/or used so far in the engineering process in this course, as well as a link and small slide show pertaining to the EDD project on which I am currently working.
Engineering Design and Development
Agile Development:
Agile development is a type of project management that we studied as part of our EDD course. Agile development is an alternative to traditional project management that utilize collaboration of teams that organize and account for themselves to create ideas and solutions in the development and management of projects. One important aspect of agile development is that is is fast and flexible, where many minds are constantly developing and fixing the project at hand.
Lean Production:
Lean production is a production method that was explained in the EDD course. This is a method of manufacturing that views "value" as any action or material for which a consumer would be willing to pay. In this perspective, lean production aims to eliminate as much waste as possible in the manufacturing process, therefore maximizing the amount of value in the production of each item. The waste that is taken into consideration in this process includes material waste, waste from overburden, and waste from uneven work loads.
Problem Identification and Research:
After brainstorming some problems and finding a group that held similar interests to me, my group and I conducted some market research on three of our brainstormed problems, by asking peers which problem was most important to them and what problem was most relevant to a larger majority of humans in our region. After completing market research, we found that the problem of acid rain eroding stone structures was the most relevant, and we decided to make this our problem to solve during the year. After deciding on our problem, we conducted research on the topic of acid deposition, how it is formed, where it is most prevalent, how it affects stones, and which stones it affects most. All this information was compiled into a literature review which can be viewed by clicking the link below.
Project Proposal:
After completing research and forming our literature review, our group developed an official problem statement, which can be view on the first slide of our project proposal presentation below. Our problem statement was continually developed and altered as we learned more about acid deposition and its impacts and having the statement has helped keep us objective in our project development. Along with the problem statement, other information including background information, problematic areas, our problem's significance, and our future plan of attack, was compiled into a presentation (The powerpoint of this presentation is below in the form of a slideshow). This presentation was used to present our problem in a project proposal to a panel of professionals in our community. Our group presented our problem and received feedback from the panel on how to move forward with our project. We are continuing to use this feedback as we develop our solution and progress in our project. We hope to prevent deterioration from acid deposition by creating a clear coating that can be applied to stone structures and will prevent the acid from chemically reacting with the stone.