T/650/9628 BTEC Level 4 Unit 1 Product Design Assignment: PCB Inspection Jig Case Study for Stakeholder-Driven Engineering Solutions

Unit Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this unit students will be able to:

• LO1 Create a design specification for a given design brief that meets stakeholder’s requirements, along with a proposed design solution
• LO2 Analyse possible technical solutions to implement the proposed design specification
• LO3 Produce a design report considering all key aspects including manufacturability (or design for manufacturing and assembly) and environmental impact
• LO4 Present the design solution to an audience, including evaluation of feedback and future improvements.

Assignment Brief and Guidance:

Scenario

You work as a design engineer for a small manufacturing company and have been asked to meet with a potential customer. The company mass-produces Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) for laptop computers, in factories across Asia, the Far East and South America. Currently PCBs are being inspected by hand, but errors and damage have occurred on some production lines.

They require an adjustable jig that can be used in all the manufacturing facilities, on each of the production lines, and can hold a variety of different PCBs. The jig is to be attached to a workbench and it should rotate and swivel to allow inspection of the PCB from any angle and both sides.

Task

Part 1: Preparing your Product Design Specification (PDS)

With the above information from the client, produce a Product Design Specification (PDS), using a suitable template, which fulfils all the client’s specifications. Provide a plan of how you are going to design the product taking into account the importance of each activity, their sequence and timing in the plan. You need to show your plan in an easy to interpret format.

You also need to make use of appropriate industry standards as reference, comparing and contrasting them with your PDS.

This task also requires you to perform the following:

• Research the characteristics of PCBs used in laptop computers and existing inspection jigs/fixtures/techniques
• Understand the client’s / stakeholder’s design brief requirements and explain how they influence the way that you prepare your PDS.
• Research and explain the use of Critical Path Analysis (CPA) in managing a project.
• Produce a design project schedule with a graphical illustration of the planned activities.

Part 2: Constructing possible solutions to a technical problem

Your manager requires you to provide three proposed solutions. Using the PDS that you have derived in Part 1, formulate three design solutions, evaluate these three solutions and show how you arrived at your final proposed choice of design solution.

In order to fulfil this task you need to include the following:

• Use software to model or simulate and or prototyping the different design solutions. This should include labelled sketches or CAD models which are either 3D models or 2D drawings.
• Make use of evaluation techniques used in the industry such as cause and effect diagrams, forced decision making or a Pugh matrix.

Part 3: Prepare an industry standard engineering technical report

Your manager approved your choice of design solution and would like you to prepare an industry standard design technical report of your proposed solution. In this report, you should also include your evaluation of the effectiveness of this report to allow your design solution to be turned into a finished product which meets the customer’s requirements.

To fulfil this task, you also need to include the following:

• An explanation of the role of design specifications, standards and environmental impact
• An assessment of your choice of design solution and indicate its limitations, consider compliance to standards, safety and risk management issues.
• Research a formal professional engineering technical design report for fully compliant finished product and evaluate its effectiveness
• Use of references to acknowledge other’s work and citation within the text.

Part 4: Present to an audience a design solution based on the design report and evaluate the solution/presentation

Your manager has reviewed your technical report and would like you to prepare a presentation to the design team and the production manager and you should be prepared to answer questions concerning your design solution and note any suggestion from the audience.

After the presentation, your manager would want you to review your presentation, analyse feedback from your audience and to justify any further improvement to the design solution that you have presented. You are also expected to explain other methods of communication and presentation that you could have used and reflect on how effective the method of communication you have chosen.

To complete this part, you should also consider/produce:

• The audience identified (see above)
• Opportunities for feedback/Q&A should be considered as part of the presentation
• An e-mail debrief for your manager.

Answer

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