Project Summary
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Project Information
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Background Information
Each year, more than 300 engineering students
participate in the Multidisciplinary Senior Design
(MSD) course at RIT as their capstone design
experience. The course allows students to use the
skills they have learned in their classes to
design, build and test their solutions to design
problems. Each team has a budget and is responsible
for purchasing the parts, and sometimes, the tools
needed to realize their design. The MSD office
manages purchasing and an inventory of hand tools
that students can sign out to use on the 4th floor
of the engineering building. Other resources are
available around campus, however there is minimal
visibility and no organized system for keeping
track of these additional resources.
Project Goal
The goal of this MSD project is to develop a
supplier performance and inventory control system
for the MSD office. The new system will improve the
visibility of the inventory, help teams quickly
understand the availability of tools and supplies
on campus, maintain control of the inventory that
is available, and control purchasing to reduce the
waste of material, money, time and space. Overall,
the team hopes to improve the experience and
success of future MSD student teams while reducing
time, money, materials, and storage space for the
MSD office. Additional project information is
included in the Project Readiness Package.
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From left to right: Alex Resnick, Brian Woodard,
William Darlington, Keleigh Bicknell
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Team Members
MSDI Phase Summaries
Problem Definition Phase
The team hopes to better understand the project
deliverables through conducting customer interviews. These
interviews will provide a baseline for establishing the
customer requirements and engineering metrics. In addition,
the team will assign leadership roles, establish a set of
team values and norms, construct a rough project timeline
and solidify a problem statement. Various support documents
will be generated to aid in better defining the current
state and desired state.
Systems Design Phase
The system design phase focused on determining the
functionality of the system as well as a design for
implementation. Benchmarking was utilized to formulate
ideas that could be applied to our system. The designs
generated were evaluated against the engineering
requirements to ensure the system satisfies the necessary
metrics. A feasibility analysis and risk analysis were
performed to better understand the potential issues that
could arise so a plan could be set in place to mitigate
their occurrence. This phase will prepare the team for
subsystem design and prototyping in the upcoming weeks.
SubSystem Design Phase
During the subsystem level design phase the team plans
to continue developing prototypes of the purchasing and
tool loan out software. Web space on the RIT web server
will be requested to begin creation of a MSD specific
website. Time studies will be performed to document the
current state and identify additional areas for
improvement. A testing plan will be created to document how
the team will receive feedback on the current prototypes.
Preliminary Detailed Design Phase
Throughout this phase, the team plans to continue
enhancing the various prototypes based off feedback from
the previous design reviews. The team will be meeting with
three process experts to receive additional feedback on how
the proposed system can be improved. In addition, a survey
will be sent to current MSD I and MSD II students to gauge
guide response time to purchase requests as well as surplus
utilization. The team plans to walk through the prototypes
with multiple senior design teams to receive additional
feedback on the current prototypes from the stakeholder
perspective.
Detailed Design Phase
Throughout this phase the team plans to focus
primarily on the transition from MSD I to MSDII. Testing
plans, training plans, and a detailed breakdown of our next
steps for the first five weeks of MSDII will be discussed
and documented. Minor changes will be made to the
prototypes. In addition, the team will prepare for the
final Gate Review for approval to move towards
implementation in the upcoming weeks.
MSDII Phase Summaries
Build, Test, & Prep
Due to the nature of the project, the team previously
completed the expected deliverable's for this phase during
the Detailed Design phase of MSDI. The team utilized this
phase to familiarize themselves the test plans and held
multiple meetings with various customers to review what
would be occurring. Two meetings to highlight include
meeting with the manager of the Electrical Engineering Lab
and a collection of 15 guides participating in the MSD
program. Loose ends were tied and necessary information
received to begin the next phase of MSDII.
Subsystem Build and Test
The team's primary objective during this phase was to
begin testing with selective groups as well as get the
toolchest organized and color coded. The team spent 6 hours
on February 14 consolidating the tools available for loan
out through performing a 5S. The team also utilized one of
their test teams to get feedback on the purchasing website.
There were a few issues that were addressed to improve the
functionality of the website.
Integrated System Build and Test
The team used this phase to launch the Purchasing
application with the current MSDI students. Designated
project teams in MSDII have been utilizing the application
and any troubleshooting required has begun. The tool loan
out application is up and running and being tested with the
MSD office. The team continues to work on developing
training documents. An application for the machine shop was
developed and presented to the customer. It will be
launched during the next phase.
Final Demo & Customer Handoff
Due to the interactive nature of the project, the team
considers the last two phases of MSDII "Final Demo". The
team has worked closely with the MSD office, Christine
Fisher and the office staff to ensure the systems are
working properly and effectively. Any issues or desired
changes were brought to the teams attention and
implemented. Training documents, videos, and final coding
changes were all completed during this phase for efficient
customer handoff. A new bar-code scanner was purchased to
address the scanning issue with the previous scanner. The
Machine Shop application was implemented and is in
production.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the MSD office staff for their
flexibility to meet with the team. A special thanks to
Jessica VanGiesen and Leslie Bowen for taking time out of
their busy schedules to meet with us and provide feedback
on the prototypes.