ME450: Design & Manufacturing III Winter 2015

Course Syllabus
Course Mission
The educational goal of ME450 is to teach students how to approach open-ended design
challenges by process, how to manage and work in collaborative teams, and how to synthesize
and apply diverse engineering knowledge to the design and manufacturing of real mechanical
systems.
Primary Course Details
Course Coordinator:
Lecture:

Amy Hortop (abhortop@umich.edu)

Tuesday & Thursday, 1:00 2:30 PM
1504 GGBL (George G. Brown Laboratory, Lee Iacocca Room)

Discussion Sections:

Tuesday & Thursday, 2:30 5:30 PM

Held in either section rooms or instructor offices

Course Instructors, Discussion Sections, and Room Locations

Amy Hortop (abhortop@umich.edu)
Section 02: 2150 Dow
Office: 1520A Dow

Prof. Wei Lu
Section 05: 2305 GGBL
Office: 3666 GGBL

Prof. Elijah Kannatey-Asibu

Section 03: 1010 DOW
Office: 2140 GGBL

Prof. Albert Shih

Section 06: 1006 DOW
Office: 3001 EECS

Prof. Brent Gillespie

Section 04: 1363 GGBL
Office: 2142 GGBL
Graduate Student Instructor (GSI)
Aaron Frantz (afran@umich.edu)
Role: Student Design Project Support and Software Analysis Support
Office Hours: Mondays/Wednesdays 1:30-3:30 in the GG Brown Addition Galleria
**If the Galleria is full and you dont see Aaron, he will instead hold office hours in the Mujo Caf
(Duderstadt Center)
Course Objectives
The educational goal of this course is to give each student an understanding of design principles and to teach
him/her how to integrate and apply engineering knowledge obtained at U of M toward the design and
manufacturing of mechanical systems. Accomplishment of this goal will be measured through the successful
completion of an open-ended design project with appropriate checkpoints and corresponding reporting
deliverables. At the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. Solve an open-ended mechanical engineering design problem including the broader considerations of
performance, cost, safety, and societal impact. The problem must provide opportunities for creative
ME 450 Winter 2015 - Syllabus
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mechanical design, fundamental analysis, and proof-of-concept prototyping. Each student team
works on a different project and everyone participates in project proposal development, reporting,
and interactive elements of the design process.
2. Apply a design process appropriate to the engineering problem at hand, including unstructured
creativity as part of a structured design problem.
3. Generate and evaluate design concepts after gaining a sound understanding of the problem
background and existing design concepts.
4. Identify a set of design variables and governing equations for the selected design concept that can be
utilized to improve the design.
Course Outcomes
When this course is completed, students should be able to achieve the following:
1. Given a qualitative and open-ended "real-world" engineering design problem, suggest a solution
based on quantitative analysis.
2. Learn to work effectively in engineering teams to resolve conflict and meet quantitative engineering
objectives established during the project. Learn to communicate effectively with peers, project
sponsors, advisors, and/or mentors.
3. Learn to consider unstructured creativity as part of a structured design process. This means
generating concepts using methods such as brainstorming and functional decomposition, followed by
a systematic evaluation process to grade the merits/flaws in each idea.
4. Learn to make good assumptions and exercise sound judgment in solving open-ended problems.
5. Manage and plan large design projects using time management tools, and be able to handle
uncertain and incomplete information effectively to meet project goals.
6. Learn to clearly request and exchange quantitative information, and to communicate project results,
to audiences of varying expertise levels.
7. Learn patent and literature search methods, benchmarking, and other general forms of background
independent learning.
8. Integrate past course material to advance basic system concepts to a prototyping level, providing
support for all design decisions by defensible engineering analysis and reasoning.
9. Demonstrate the principles of safety by design; not only by executing an incident-free project but by
being able communicate and document how potential hazards were eliminated by design.
Overview of Milestones and Deliverables
Design Reviews: The schedule of deliverables in ME450 is intended to keep teams on track for a successful
Design Expo (scheduled for Thursday, April 16th this term). While the work of each project is expected to
evolve throughout the term, the course is organized around five Design Reviews (DRs). At each DR, teams
present written and/or oral summaries of their recent work and receive feedback from their peers, sponsors,
and instructors. The DRs are where teams are assessed as to the quality of their work at each key step in the
design process, and all team members must be present. Missing a scheduled Design Review can have a
negative impact on your participation grade. Please communicate with your section instructor prior to
missing a Design Review. Design review guidelines will be made available in CTOOLS prior to each scheduled
DR. These guidelines will outline deliverables required for each DR as well as their deadline.
Each team is required to upload all deliverables to their online Portfolio: a Google sites page they will use
throughout the term, first assigned to them when the team is created. Each site is accessible by the course
instructors for continual review of the progress of a project, but is otherwise only accessible for editing by the
team assigned it. Details on use of the Project Portfolio (including video tutorials) are posted in guidelines
supplied within each teams page, as well as on CTools.
ME 450 Winter 2015 - Syllabus
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Mock Journal Paper: The final deliverable for the class will be a report formatted in the style of a mock
journal paper describing each teams design process from beginning to end. Sections of this paper will come
from the draft reports that will be submitted for particular DRs (details will be posted within guidelines for
each DR on CTools). Revisions to each section are expected after receiving feedback from the section
instructor. The final document, as a whole, is assessed at the end of the term and forms a significant portion
of your final grade.
Lecture
Students will nominally be assigned to groups of four that will work together the entire semester on a single
design project. Cooperative learning methods will be used that depend heavily on teamwork. The lectures
will provide approaches, knowledge, and tools that can be used by teams as they progress from design to
prototyping.
The lectures will cover topics not previously presented in core ME courses such as risk assessment, ethics,
environmental impact, and materials and manufacturing process selection. Initially, the lectures will cover
how the design of mechanical systems can be approached using a process. These lectures will be applied
directly to individual projects via in-class exercises, followed by meetings with the section instructors.
Lecture Attendance Policy: Attendance is required at each lecture. Entering class after 1:10 or leaving before
class ends will have a negative impact on your participation grade. Therefore, please communicate with your
section instructor and the course GSI prior to class if attending any full lecture will be a problem for your
schedule. Of course, good reasons to miss lecture come up from time to time and we will be accommodating
to your professional obligations and special needs. While we do have a large class, we also expect that you
will participate fully in the lectures.
To keep attendance, a sign-in sheet may be passed around during class. You are asked to sign next to your
name on the sign-in sheet. You are allowed one unexcused absence during the semester. All other absences
will need to be excused by sending an email to the course GSI with the reason for the absence and a copy of
the message to your section instructor. The section instructor has the right to not approve the request for
excused absence. Each unexcused absence (after the first) will deduct 1% of your class grade up to a
maximum of 10%.
Discussion Section/ Team Meetings
Immediately following lecture, you will meet in your discussion section or meet with your instructor for Team
meetings, which keep everyone on track and are a forum for each team to interact with the section
instructor. At each 30-minute meeting, you will be expected to bring in drafts of the deliverables expected in
the next DR. Later in the term, the teams will primarily be reviewing progress on the prototype, as well as
revisions to the design that may come up during manufacturing or validation. The primary goal of the team
meetings is to provide a constant stream of feedback throughout the term as each team iterates their designs
and associated deliverables. Questions can be addressed as they come up and last-minute problems can be
minimized.
Team Meeting Attendance Policy: Attendance is mandatory for the team meetings. Permission for absence
must be arranged prior to missing a team meeting. Attendance is especially important as participation in the
team meetings will form a significant portion of your participation grade. Peer reviews will also be conducted
periodically. This will solicit your opinions regarding the energy, impact, professionalism, and enthusiasm of
your teammates. The section instructors will weigh this input seriously as participation grades are
determined.
ME 450 Winter 2015 - Syllabus
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ME450 Prerequisites
The main requirement for ME450 is ME350: Design and Manufacturing II. You are expected to have a solid
working knowledge of elementary mechanics such as statics, dynamics, and strength of materials. For
example, you should be able to draw free body diagrams and determine such quantities as loads, deflections,
and stress distributions across sections of mechanical components due to bending, torsion, and shear. You
are also expected to have basic machining skills and be authorized to use the ME undergraduate machine
shop.
Textbook
There is no textbook for the course. Suggested readings for specific lectures will be available on CTools along
with lecture notes, guiding worksheets, general resources, and URLs that will facilitate the application of a
design process to your project. A general reference textbook you may find useful throughout the course is:
George Dieter and Linda Schmidt, Engineering Design, 5th Ed., 2012, McGraw Hill.
General Safety
Students are responsible first and foremost for their own safety. It is the goal of your section instructor and
department staff to ensure that you have the tools and environment to design a safe product and to
fabricate and test it without hazards. Experience has taught us that students cannot be reminded enough
times about the need to keep safety considerations paramount. We will therefore reiterate the principles
of safety by design, machine shop safety, and safe product testing throughout the semester. Safety will be
reinforced in the following ways:
1. Lecture: You will be introduced to the process of documenting, assessing, and eliminating safety risks
in the design process, as well as tools to facilitate this process.
2. Safety Plans: A complete online safety plan is required to be filed and approved before the initiation
of any physical testing, prototyping, or laboratory experimentation. This safety plan must be updated
as part of each DR.
3. Supervised Testing: If any activity proposed in a safety plan is deemed sufficiently dangerous, you will
be required to conduct some/all of it under supervision from your section instructor. If your section
instructor cannot make it to the only available testing time, the course GSI may be present instead.
Safety Plans and the Review Process
A Safety Plan must be created by the team. Details of what must be contained in the Safety Plan will be
discussed during lecture and documented in CTools. This document records the details of any planned
fabrication/validation and must show that not only the proposed activities are reasonably safe to the team
and broader stakeholders: it also must clearly communicate that potential hazards have been designed out of
the system or minimized to acceptable levels. Safety Plans are constructed and submitted via an online form
which can be found here:
https://me-web2.engin.umich.edu/safetyplan/student
Safety Plans are reviewed by the section instructor, the course GSI, and department staff. If necessary,
reviews may involve further discussion with each team to address any concerns. The results of these
reviews/discussions will be shared with the ME450 course coordinator, with appropriate action taken to
assure that all ME450 projects are incident free. Aspects of projects featuring questionable safety
characteristics will not move from paper to physical realization.
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Machine Shop
Training is mandatory before you can start using the machine shop. In most cases, this training would have
already been completed during ME250 at UM. However, if ME250 at the UM was not taken, and this training
is therefore needed, you will need to sign up for training sessions using the following link:
https://me-web2.engin.umich.edu/meshop/student/training
Four machine shop training modules must be completed in the GG Brown machine shop cutting/drilling,
lathe, mill, and precision measurement. Following these 4 modules, a Lathe exercise and Mill exercise must
be completed.
There are limited training sessions it is the students responsibility to sign up and complete these sessions
in a timely manner.
The machine shop is used by a number of mechanical engineering courses, and time in the machine shop is
very valuable. Reservations can be made using the following link:
https://me-web2.engin.umich.edu/meshop/student
Missing a reserved machine shop time slot will be considered a serious offense. Teams that need to miss
their time slot should un-reserve the time slot (on the same website that they used to make the reservation.)
Any team that misses a reserved time slot without un-reserving it will lose machine shop privileges until the
end of the following day.
Machine shop rules and protocols have to be followed at all times while accessing and working in the
machine shops. Every student is required to read and understand these rules described in the document
Machine Shop Rules to be posted on CTools. Failure to follow machine shop rules will result in temporary
or permanent loss of shop privileges.
Mechatronics Lab (GGB 1113) and X50 Assembly Room
Students will have access to these labs during the semester. Detailed rules and instructions (including safety
instructions) will be posted on CTools, and every student is required to read and understand these rules.
Failure to follow lab rules will result in temporary or permanent loss of lab privileges.
Grading Policy
Not all students in the same team will receive the same grade in ME450. Design reviews, in-class activities,
and prototypes will be submitted and graded on a team basis. Participation in the course will be graded on an
individual basis by the section instructors. The participation grade will be determined by class attendance,
lecture participation, discussion section participation, peer evaluations, oral presentations, and contributions
to the portfolio materials and prototype. If the participation percentage is very low, signifying that a student
did not participate fully in the class, the entire grade for the course will be adjusted downward at the
discretion of the section instructor and course coordinator. The students final grade will reflect actual
participation and the grade deserved.
Negligent or unsafe practices that lead to safety risks to you or other students will also lead to deductions of
final individual or team grades by at least one half letter grade. Violation of procedures intended to avoid
unsafe practices will be treated as unsafe practices.

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Grade Breakdown:
Design Reviews and Safety Review
Participation and Peer Evaluations
Lecture Attendance
Design Expo Presentation
Final Prototype
Final Report

40%
15%
10%
5%
15%
15%

Additional Resources
Patent Research Assistance
Paul Grochowski (email: grocho@umich.edu), phone: 734-647-5738) is an engineering librarian at Duderstadt
Center, can help you conduct patent research for your project. Effective searching of prior work, including
patents, is an essential part of the benchmarking process necessary for successful design reviews and the
final paper. Mr. Grochowski has created a Research Guide on MLibrary to assist research for ME 450:
http://guides.lib.umich.edu/content.php?pid=293610
Intellectual Property (IP) Questions
Nadine Wong (email: nwsk@umich.edu) is a licensing specialist with the U of M Office of Technology Transfer
(OTT), is available throughout the term to answer questions you might have about intellectual property rights
in the context of ME450 and your specific project.
Note: This topic will be discussed on the first day of class. For some projects, you must agree to the
intellectual property arrangement sought by the sponsor before you start any work on the project. See the
project descriptions posted on CTools for the IP arrangements expected for each project.

ME 450 Winter 2015 - Syllabus

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ME450: Design & Manufacturing III Winter 2015

Lecture Schedule and Key Dates
Week

2
3
4
5

7
8
9
10

11
12
13
14
15

Date

Lecture Topic

Instructor

Jan 13

** Lecture Room 1:00-2:30**

Intro to Design/ Course information
Intellectual Property
Research Assistance
**2:30-4:00 in Stamps Aud**
Project Management
Project Selection
Soliciting User Needs: Design Ethnography Techniques

Jan 15

Engineering Requirements/ Specs

Prof. Shih

Jan 20

Function Decomposition, Concept Generation

Shanna Daly

Jan 22

Primary Design Drivers, Simplest Competent Model

Prof. Gillespie

Jan 27

DR1 (1:00-4:00 PM): Background, User Requirements, Engineering Specs

Jan 29

Down-selection Methods, Concept Selection Scoring Systems

Hortop

Feb 3
Feb 5

Materials Selection & Material Indices

Human Factors & Ergonomics

Prof. Lu
Prof. Reed

Feb 10

Control Systems & Mechatronics

Prof. Gillespie

Feb 12

DR2 (1:00-4:00 PM): Concept Generation and Selection, Initial Analysis

and Mockup

Feb 17

Design for Safety, FMEA/ Risk Assessment

Guest/Hortop

Feb 19

Design for Manufacturing (DFM), Design for Assembly

Prof. Asibu

Feb 24

OptimizationModeling & Simulation

Prof. Lu

Feb 26

DR3 (1:00-4:00 PM): Analysis & Mockup

Mar 3
Mar 5

Spring Break
Spring Break

Mar 10

Design of Experiments, experimental design

Hortop

Mar 12

Design for Environment (DFE), Sustainability

Prof. Skerlos

Mar 17

Ethics in Engineering

Prof. Shih

Mar 19

DR4 (1:00-4:00 PM): Prototype, Design, Manufacturing

Mar 24
Mar 26
Mar 31
April 2
April 7
April 9
April 14

DR5: (1:00-4:00 PM): Final Changes, Validation Plan

April 16

Design Expo

Jan 8

ME 450 Instructors
Nadine Wong
Paul Grochowski

Prof. Asibu

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ME450: Design & Manufacturing III Winter 2015

Week

Date

Jan 8

Project selection sheet due by 5:30 pm

Jan 13

Team Roles, Team Email List, DR1 Project Plan

Jan 15

Background, SPONSOR VISITS

Jan 20

User Requirements

Jan 22

Functional Decomposition, Generated Concepts

Jan 27

DR1 Materials (Background, User Requirements, Engineering Specs), DR2 Project Plan

Jan 29

DR1 Revisions based on feedback

Feb 3

Concept Scoring, Selected Concept

Feb 5

Primary Design Drivers, Simplest Competent Model

Feb 10

Materials Selection/ Initial Analysis

Feb 12

DR2 Materials (Functional Decomposition, Concept Generation, Concept Scoring, Primary Design
Drivers), DR3 Project Plan, Mockup

Feb 17

DR2 Revisions based on feedback

Feb 19

Risk Assessment

2
3
4
5

Provisional Deliverables for each Discussion Section

Feb 24
8
9
10

11
12
13
14
15

Mar 3
Mar 5

DR3 Materials (Primary Design Drivers, Simplest Competent Model, Initial Analysis--Current
Design), DR4 Project Plan, Mockup
Spring Break
Spring Break

Mar 10

DR3 Revisions based on feedback

Mar 12

Manufacturing Plan

Feb 26

Mar 17
Mar 19

DR4 Materials (Analysis--Current Design, Manufacturing Plan), DR5 Project Plan

Mar 24
Mar 26
Mar 31
April 2
April 7
April 9
April 14

DR4 Revisions based on feedback

April 16

Design Expo

Draft Expo Poster

DR5 Materials (Final Changes, Validation Plan)
DR5 Revisions based on feedback
Draft Journal Article

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