Virtual Conference
July 26, 2021
July 26, 2021
July 19, 2022
Design in Engineering Education
9
10.18260/1-2--37627
https://peer.asee.org/37627
260
James Righter is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering (SOE) at The Citadel. He earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy, his MS in Military Studies from the Marine Corps University Command and Staff College, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University. His research interests include design methods, engineering leadership, collaborative design, and engineering education.
Dr. Greenburg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Leadership and Program Management (ELPM) in the School of Engineering (SOE) at The Citadel. Dr. Greenburg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Leadership and Program Management (ELPM) in the School of Engineering (SOE) at The Citadel. He served over 20 years of active military service in the United States Marine Corps. During his military career he served in a variety of progressively responsible command and staff and leadership positions in Infantry, Logistics, Acquisition, and Human Resources; with peacetime and combat experience. Upon completion of active military service, Dr. Greenburg served in technical program management and leadership positions at Eagan McAllister Associates, and Science Applications International Corporation until he joined the faculty at the Citadel. Dr. Greenburg’s research interests include modeling project networks, technical decision making and leadership. Dr. Greenburg earned is bachelors degree from The Citadel (1981), Masters of Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School (1994), and his PhD in Business Administration (Management of Engineering and Technology) from Northcentral University (2010). He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) by The Project Management Institute (PMI).
Robert Rabb is a professor and the Mechanical Engineering Department Chair at The Citadel. He previously taught mechanical engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Military Academy and his M.S.E. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests are in mechatronics, regenerative power, and multidisciplinary engineering.
Dr. Nathan Washuta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Citadel in Charleston, SC. He received both his B.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Maryland – College Park. His primary research interests include Hydrodynamics, Turbulence, and Experimental Methods.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is widely used to clearly define customer requirements and convert them into detailed engineering specifications and plans to fulfill those requirements in the design process both in industry and in Academia. It allows for prioritization of the tasks associated with achieving a solution in an analytical and systematic way by developing metrics for the specifications of the solution. Employing QFD also creates a record of why each individual decision was made, which can be useful further in the product timeline. Students in capstone design courses are commonly required to implement QFD in the form of the house of quality early in the design process to define the problem, establish engineering specifications, prioritize specifications, benchmark, and ensure the “voice of the customer” is not lost. This is performed during the project planning and specification development or task clarification stage. QFD has been proposed in the literature as a series of cascading charts that follow the design process throughout the project lifecycle to manufacturing and quality control. While students are commonly asked to use QFD early in the design process, it is much less common for students to return to QFD throughout their projects in order to learn this cascading process. This paper will assess the use of QFD during the later stages of a Capstone project to amplify the voice of the customer and emphasize quality control. Mechanical Engineering students at the institution are historically required to develop a house of quality as part of an assignment generating requirements and constraints. In the beginning of the capstone project, students are introduced to the structured process of defining the customer’s requirements and the process for transforming them into specific product designs. Students are required to establish the voice of the customer (VOC) into the design of their capstone project by creating, deploying, and analyzing a survey instrument and to incorporate the results into the house of quality. While they are encouraged to revisit the requirements and their prioritization, they are not formally required to further develop QFD techniques following the project planning phase. The results are assessed during the first formal design review and interim report. In this case study, these students will employ QFD techniques in the embodiment or detail design stages to translate the VOC into measureable design targets. The results will be assessed through a survey instrument and observation. The results will be used to develop future studies and to suggest methods to incorporate QFD throughout the capstone sequence and to emphasize student learning objectives.
Righter, J., & Greenburg, D. S., & Rabb, R. J., & Washuta, N. J. (2021, July), Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in Late Stages of Capstone Design Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37627
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