Multidisciplinary Engineering Research Articles

ConSERV, a methodology for managing multi-disciplinary engineering design projects

Projects involving multi-disciplinary engineering design effort are difficult to control. This is largely due to the various sources of indecision and conflict which can occur between the respective parties involved in front-end engineering design and project management. This paper introduces a new project management methodology aimed at assisting those project managers faced with multi-disciplinary problems. Current project management tools, being essentially axiomatic, do not provide any intelligent decision-making assistance in handling conflict or the application of complex organisational management procedures. The ConSERV concept is being developed to address these problems by applying intelligent decision-making knowledge-based support processes to the selection of appropriate project management systems.

An Application of ‘Jigsaw Learning’ to Teaching Infrastructure Model Development

SUMMARY Skills in group communication, development of problem definition and coordination of activities are essential in modern day multi-disciplinary engineering. The development of these skills requires more than just being told they exist and how the students should acquire them. Students must be exposed to these situations and taught how to handle them. This paper presents a study of a teaching technique that would encourage the development of communication skills between students: ‘jigsaw learning’. The approach consists of dividing students solving a particular problem into a number of groups. A student is first placed into an overall model development group to specify the problem to be solved. Second, he/she works in the component group to create a particular model component. Finally, once the component is developed the student moves back to the original model development group and incorporates the specific component into the overall model. In order to do this successfully, students must communicate the general description of the model to the component group, who share similar expertise. They must then communicate the findings of this expert group back to a more disparate model development group. Each student moves through the steps of: specifying the problem; specifying and considering connections between the components; developing the components; bringing them together; and presenting the results. To assess the success of the approach, a series of studies were carried out by the Higher Education Research Unit. Two questionnaires were distributed. They indicated the approach was successful but refinement was necessary.

Engineering theories as a basis for integrating deep engineering knowledge

It is proposed to solve the problem of deep engineering knowledge through the development of multidisciplinary engineering theories (ET). The principles and main features of such theories are described. To develop ET, it is proposed to use the hypothetical-deductive method and knowledge-based systems. The practical significance of ET is estimated.

CRITICAL PROCESS ASSESSMENT TOOL (CPAT) FOR ACQUISITION REFORM IN DOD

AbstractAcquisition reform within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has induced a wide variety of innovative engineering methodologies on the part of Air Force agencies such as the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) in El Segundo, CA to minimize government risk. One of these methodologies is a set of Critical Process Assessment Tools (CPATs) being developed to support project officers and project engineers: (1) in preparing Requests for Proposals (RFPs), (2) for subsequent source selection or factfinding, and (3) to participate in or review contract execution after contract award. CPATs are applicable to processes that, because of risk, are considered to be critical to execution of the involved contract. The Systems Engineering CPAT (SE‐CPAT) is the overriding element in the set since it is most likely to be critical to the success of a contract when new military or other system functional requirements are to be levied or requirements allocations and/or design must be changed for some reason. Furthermore, the SE‐CPAT serves as the integrator of other multidisciplinary engineering CPATs acting under the Integrated Product Development environment. The SE‐CPAT described in this paper, and available on the Internet, identifies a menu of objectives and other inputs to a RFP, factors and standards for source selection, and key questions for conducting technical evaluations and factfinding, and post‐contract award reviews. Throughout the paper selected SE‐CPAT excerpts are provided.

Integrated, Multidisciplinary Reservoir Characterization, Modeling and Engineering Leading to Enhanced Oil Recovery from the Midway-Sunset Field, California: ABSTRACT

The Pru Fee property is developed in a heavy oil, Class III (slope and basin clastic sand), reservoir of the Midway-Sunset field, San Joaquin Basin, California. Wells on the property were shut-in with an estimated 85% of the original oil remaining in place because the reservoir failed to respond to conventional cyclic steaming. Producibility problems are attributed to the close proximity of the property to the margin of the field. Specific problems include complex reservoir geometry, thinning pay, bottom water, and dipping beds. These problems are likely common at the margins of the Midway-Sunset and other Class III reservoirs. This project forms the first step in returning the property to production and explores strategies that might be applied elsewhere. Reservoir characterization, modeling, and engineering methods are integrated to design, simulate, and implement a pilot steam flood. A new drillhole provides good quality, core through the pay zone and a full suite of geophysical logs. Correlations between geological and petrophysical data are used to extrapolate reservoir conditions from older logs and yield a 3-dimensional petrophysical model. Numerical results illustrate how each producibility problem might influence production and provide a framework for designing the pilot steam flood. This first phase illustrates howmore » a multidisciplinary team can use established technologies in developing the detailed petrophysical, geological, and numerical models needed to enhance oil recovery from marginal areas of Class III reservoirs.« less

The virtual design team: A computational model of project organizations

Large scale and multidisciplinary engineering projects (e.g., design of a hospital building) are often complex. They usually involve many interdependent activities and require intensive coordination among actors (i.e., designers) to deal with activity interdependencies. To make such projects more effective and efficient, one needs to understand how coordination requirements are generated and what coordination mechanisms should be applied for given project situations. Our research on the Virtual Design Team (VDT) attempts to develop a computational model of project organizations to analyze how activity interdependencies raise coordination needs and how organization design and communication tools change team coordination capacity and project performance. The VDT model is built based on contingency theory (Galbraith, 1977) and our observations about collaborative and multidisciplinary work in large, complex projects. VDT explicitly models actors, activities, communication tools and organizations. Based on our extended information-processing view of organizations, VDT simulates the actions of, and interactions among actors as processes of attention allocation, capacity allocation, and communication. VDT evaluates organization performance by measuring emergent project duration, direct cost, and coordination quality. The VDT model has been tested internally, and evaluated externally through case-studies. We found three way qualitative consistency among predictions of the simulation model, of organization theory, and of experienced project managers. In this paper, we present the VDT model in detail and discuss some general issues involved in computational organization modeling, including level of abstraction of tasks and actors' reasoning, and model validation.

Millwrights to mechatronics: The merits of multi-disciplinary engineering

In recent years the term “Mechatronics” has come into use to describe a multi-disciplinary approach to engineering (and particularly engineering design) in which a symbiosis of mechanical, electrical, electronic, computer and software engineering is used to create new design solutions to engineering problems. These mechatronic designs can often be more effective than traditional solutions rooted in mono-disciplinary engineering. This paper notes that virtually all engineering was once the province of millwrights and discusses its division into the many currently recognised constituent, and largely separate, disciplines. It is argued that this has followed from the principles of efficiency through division of production which have long been a tenet of capitalist manufacturing. In the closing two decades of the twentieth century there has been a move to return to more integrated production techniques and, with the development of microprocessors and microprocessor controlled systems and products, a need for integration in engineering design and education. The ways in which microprocessors have been applied to, or embedded in, contemporary products, machines and systems are categorised and examples of the design of mechatronic devices, with which the author has been associated, are presented.

A Model Curriculum for a Capstone Course in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design

AbstractThis paper describes our efforts to develop a curricular and pedagogical model for teaching multidisciplinary design to sen ior‐level undergraduate engineering students. In our model, we address concerns of industry and engineering educators about the often narrow technical confines within which engineering design is currently taught. Our two‐semester design sequence employs multidisciplinary teams of students working with faculty managers for industrial clients to solve complex, open‐ended problems possessing numerous technical and non‐technical constraints. After a two year pilot phase, the multidisciplinary senior design (MSD) course sequence is now offered to qualified Colorado School of Mines seniors each academic year and fully meets the senior capstone design requirement in each of the participating academic departments.An on‐going formative and summative evaluation process allows us to monitor the perceptions and knowledge levels of our students compared with students completing traditional discipline‐specific design courses. Our students, faculty, and clients overwhelmingly agree that multidisciplinary design teams tend to produce better engineering designs because of the broader range of expertise available to the team. MSD students strongly agree that higher order thinking skills such as open‐ended problem‐solving abilities, engineering analysis, and engineering synthesis are important aspects of the design process. Students also rate the course highly and indicate satisfaction with the course structure and curriculum. In addition, project clients are pleased with the quality of the final designs they receive from our students. Our experience has led us to conclude that undergraduate engineering students can thrive in a carefully designed multidisciplinary environment.

Total Quality Management in the Engineering Services Environment

Quality management principles have been applied in a multidiscipline engineering design environment that emphasizes designing and building advanced technical facilities. The formulation of group objectives and annual goals and the alignment of improvement actions are discussed. The improvement process involves organizational, team, and individual actions supported by multi-tiered measurements and training. Both customer satisfaction and critical group performance measures have shown important improvements over the past 4 years.

特集・業からみた造園研究の課題 総合建設コンサルタントにおける造園の課題

特集・業からみた造園研究の課題 総合建設コンサルタントにおける造園の課題

The System Cottage—a multidisciplinary engineering group practical

Industrial input led to this group project practical for Computer Science students at the University of Edinburgh. The project ties together many components of the Computer Science curriculum, and involves students who do joint degrees with other subjects, enabling them to use their speciality subject. It is argued that this form of practical enhances the education of software engineers beyond that which is normally found in programming practicals. The industrial input has been retained throughout the project, and industry continues to play a valuable role in this course. Sufficient detail is included to allow others to incorporate elements of this group project in their own courses, as many have commented to us that they would like to run such a practical. Although the group project course was designed to improve the education of our students, it is concurrent with the latest trends in computer science and software engineering education, and also seems to have anticipated professional and political criticism of education.

A Conceptual Approach to Ocean Disposal

An ocean waste disposal system (OWDS) is a complex multidisciplinary engineering problem. The aim of this paper is to focus on the most relevant aspects, pointing out the most important processes and parameters and analysing how they interact. A research programme for field data collection and statistical analysis is recommended to define paramenters. The modelling of specific processes must contribute to a simulation which relates and weights the major factors and parameters operating. A conceptual simulation model is shown to be useful in designing the general layout of the system, and to predict its performance and environmental impact. Finally an optional optimization model is suggested for use with the simulation to define further the optimum OWDS design.

How to Manage Large Multidisciplinary Engineering Groups

How to Manage Large Multidisciplinary Engineering Groups

Multi-disciplinary engineering in the process industries

This paper sets out the views of a group of people, mainly Industry Training Board staff, with interests across a wide range of process industries.The aim of the paper is to draw attention to the professional engineering needs of the process industries and ensure the continuation and further development of education and training to meet their requirements.It examines:the changes, particularly in technology, which are affecting the process industries.the implications for the role of their engineering personnel.whether a new approach is needed to the education and training of such personnel.

The Energy Systems Engineering Program of the University of Texas at Austin

In an effort to meet the educational needs of the Southwestern United States, The University of Texas at Austin has evolved a multidisciplinary Energy Systems Engineering Program. While many of the basis elements of the traditional power program were retained, several new elements were also added to make the program more responsive to the needs of the electric power industry and other energy-related industries. The guidelines for this new program were developed jointly by representatives from both industry and academia. One of the primary goals of the program is to produce an end product who has a better understanding of both the electrical and mechanical concepts of energy engineering. As a direct result, faculty members from the Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineering Departments actively participate in the formal classroom portion of the program. The industry is kept actively involved through regularly scheduled seminars and research projects. Research is the second multidisciplinary component of this program. A wide variety of research projects are currently underway with regional representatives of the energy industry. The objectives of these research efforts vary from basic engineering research to applied engineering. In addition to the actual research efforts, their results are incorporated into the formal classroom portion of the program whereever possible.

Clarifying the Role of Environmental Analysts

The responsibilities of the private consulting environmental analyst are complex and may involve the public, the client, the consulting firm, regulatory agencies, and personal professional interests. These relationships may be conflicting but need not be mutually exclusive. The role of environmental analysts as part of a multidisciplinary engineering design team is critical to achieving projects that are cost-effective, environmentally sound, and implementable. Environmental analysts must work through professional societies to promote their professional status and clearly define professional and moral responsibilities.

A pure engineering problem—the manufacture of gallium phosphide

Gallium phosphide is gaining an increasing share of the expanding market for l.e.d. materials. This article looks at the stages in the manufacturing process and reviews the multidiscipline engineering effort needed to create the equipment demanded by this new industry.

Selection Of Appropriate Approximation SchemesIn Multi-disciplinary Engineering Optimization

Selection Of Appropriate Approximation SchemesIn Multi-disciplinary Engineering Optimization

Standards of length and their subdivision

Partly due to the current crisis and its high unemployment rates, the labor market increasingly requires multidisciplinary engineers with additional skills to their own. Engineering education therefore faces new challenges and these include equipping engineers with greater entrepreneurship. Although entrepreneurship education has consequently been integrated into the new engineering degrees, is this enough to boost entrepreneurship among engineers and on what does their level of entrepreneurship depend?This research work aims to analyze the impact of entrepreneurial motivations on entrepreneurial intentions among future engineers and identify the role than entrepreneurship education plays in the development of the engineers’ entrepreneurship. The results indicate that the need for independence is the key factor in the entrepreneurial intent of future engineers and confirm the positive contribution that entrepreneurship education has on their entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, recommendations are offered which could help the various agents involved increase the effectiveness of actions aimed at promoting firm creation in this area.