As part of the requirements for IE 361, you will carry out a process-oriented quality improvement project with a (real) client of your own choosing/recruiting.  To the extent possible, you should attempt to carry through an iteration of the process-oriented quality assurance cycle laid out in Table 1.1 of the text.

A. Purposes of the Project

The purpose of the project is to practice with the course material and to strengthen your skills of problem formulation and solution, cooperation with others, and professional oral and written communication.

B. Group Size

Each group will ordinarily consist of 4 team members.  Under exceptional circumstances, teams of smaller size may be formed, but only with the explicit prior approval of your instructor. No more than one graduate student may be a member of any group.  Students will organize their own groups, and are responsible for arranging a project with a client organization.

C. Project Milestones/Reports

1. An initial project proposal is due February 12. This one page report should name the team members and proposed client, and should outline the problem on which the team and client plan to cooperate.  Provide contact information for your client, preferably including an email address.  While the exact final form of your project may not be known at this point, the proposal should not be vague -- you need to describe a solid idea and plan for how you will accomplish it.  Your group will schedule a meeting with the instructor during the week of February 18 to discuss your plans.

2. An interim progress report is due March 26. By this point your problem should be well formulated and an initial plan for solution be agreed on among team members and client. This progress report must include a careful and detailed problem statement, an outline of the planned solution with a time table for completion and a statement initialed by the client indicating his/her agreement with your plans.  For most projects, at least some data collection and analysis should also be completed at this point, and these should be briefly summarized in the progress report.

The lab period on March 12 will be spent in informal discussion of project progress.  Each team will prepare a 5-minute slide presentation (PowerPoint or pdf) by one team member describing the problem, progress to date and plan for completion.  These informal presentations will be followed by class discussion.  Bring paper copies of the slides for your instructor to mark on during the presentation and discussion.  Be sure your use language everyone can understand (not company- or trade-specific jargon you've learned from your client).

3. A three part, professional quality final report will summarize your work on this project. You will produce:

a) A professional quality display, fitting on one piece of foam (illustration) board (not poster board) between 32x40 inches and 36x48 inches.  This display should tell the whole story of your project and be able to stand by itself on an easel or the lip of a chalk board. It must be easily understood from a distance of 6-8 feet. No more than 300 words may appear on this display (and many effective displays have had far fewer than this number). We will hold a low key evening "reception" on Tuesday April 30, where class members, other IE students and faculty, and project clients are invited to view these displays and talk informally with you about what you accomplished in your project.

b) An oral report will be presented in class on April 30. Guidelines for this presentation are:


i) All team members must participate.

ii) Report length will be 10+/-1 minutes, excluding questions. (Practice and time yourselves! Deviations from this guideline will not be well received.)

iii) PowerPoint or pdf files will be used.  Bring the presentation on a USB memory stick.  (Do not depend on being able to access your material over the web in the classroom.)  You should begin with a title slide, and produce other slides outlining your main points, giving drawings/schematics of parts or machines you worked on, showing graphical summaries of data you collected and used, et cetera.  Be sure beforehand that your figure details and fonts are large and clear enough to be seen by everyone in the classroom.  It is your responsibility to make sure your presentation will work properly on the IMSE equipment.  Bring to class a set of physical transparencies of your talk, so that you can present as scheduled even if the computer equipment fails.

iv) The report should provide adequate background for a listener with no prior knowledge of your client's business or your project, and then go on to emphasize methodology, obstacles overcome and the results/quality improvements obtained.

v) Approximately 1-2 minutes will be allowed at the end of each presentation for questions and comments from the audience.
 

c) A single written report from each team is due by 5pm on Friday, May 3, both on paper and as a pdf file emailed to your instructor. The paper document will not be returned, so if you want copies, make them before turning it in. This paper version of the report should be bound in a loose-leaf binder;  do not staple the report together or use a binder that clamps the pages together.  Your report must include at least the following elements:
 
i) A title page giving:
1.) names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all team members,
2.) client company, and the name, address, phone number and email address of the responsible contact employee.
 
ii) A one page executive summary describing the project and main results for your busy engineering manager.

iii) A table of contents for the whole report including appendices.

iv) An introduction giving background to the problem, sketches or photos of equipment involved and a quantitative assessment of the quality situation at the beginning of team involvement.  (Be sensitive to matters of corporate security here.  Don't photograph anything unless you have explicit permission to do so.)

v) A description of the work done by the team in search of a problem solution/quality improvement. Although details of calculations, data collection sheets, etc. should be deferred to appendices, this section should "tell the whole story" of the team's efforts using whatever prose, graphs, tables, sketches, etc. are needed.

vi) A recommendations/results/project impact section. Ideally, team efforts will lead to recommendations for the client that can be implemented and their impact evaluated and reported in the final write-up. At a minimum, realistic (practically implementable) recommendations and justification for them should be included in the report.

vii) Appendices. Include as appendices carefully documented and organized lists of data collected by the team (include date, technician, unit of measure, etc.), listings of computer programs written for the project, fully annotated computer outputs, detailed "hand" calculations, a reference list and copies of the project proposal and progress report. (The relevance of any such appendix material should be immediately clear to the reader. Do not leave a reader guessing why the appendix material was included. Appendix material included should be referred to in the body of the report. Be sure any appendices are clearly labeled!)

viii) Copies of the visuals you use in your final oral presentation.

ix) Sealed envelopes (one from each team member) containing an assessment of percentage of total team effort provided by every team member. (If it becomes clear that the project work load was seriously unbalanced, your instructor may assign different project grades to different team members.)

x) A receipt from your client indicating that he/she has received a copy of your final written report AND an evaluation by the client of the quality and value of your work to his or her organization in the form of completed ABET Evaluation Tables, one for each team member.  (The blank table will be posted on the course web page.)  The receipt and ABET tables may be sent to the instructor directly by email if the client prefers, but in any case must reach him by the report deadline of Friday, May 3.  (In your early discussions with prospective clients, be sure you make them aware that your instructor will need this feedback from them;  this is a relatively new requirement, and some previous clients will not be aware of it.)
 

Use i) through x) above as a checklist, and do not exclude any of these items (except possibly vii) if appendices are not needed).

Your instructor will respond verbally to your project proposal during your group's meeting during the week of February 18 to discuss your approach to your client's situation.   Your instructor will provide a written response/evaluation to your interim report after March 26.  Your instructor will be available to provide "free" (ungraded) feedback on your visuals for the in-class presentation, and on drafts (in final, complete form) of your report through Friday, April 19.  He will also prepare a summary sheet of his overall assessment of your work that you may see after course is completed.

E. Acceptable Topics and Grading Criteria

An ideal project will focus on a client process producing a good or service, complete a logical analysis of how that process works, formulate appropriate measures of process performance, collect process data, assess and make any changes needed to establish process stability, characterize "stable process performance" and work to the improvement of the process that has been brought into stability. The ideal project has a client who owns the problem/process and works closely with the team, allowing it substantial "hands on" (or near hands on) contact with the process, and stands to gain real benefit from successful project completion. The client could be a manufacturing engineer, a shop manager, a Q.C. analyst, a small business owner, etc. Ideally, techniques used in the project will be drawn from those discussed in IE 361.

It is unlikely that every project team will find an "ideal" project. Project grades will be assigned partially on the basis of topic quality (potential value to the client and alignment with the goals of IE 361), partially on the basis of the technical merit of the team effort, and partially on the quality and professionalism of the reports produced by the team (including the proposal, progress report and display). The final report should leave no doubt in the reader's mind that the work done was truly motivated by a desire to improve the client's process, and not merely a numerical demonstration of textbook formulae using the client's data.

F. Project Grade Guidelines

Topic Quality 20%
Technical Merit 25%
Display 15%
Oral Report 15%
Written Report 25%

Proposal Due -- February 12
Consult With Instructor - February 18-22
Interim Report Due -- March 26
Last Guaranteed Date For Free Advice -- April 19
Oral Presentations -- April 30 (during lab)
Evening Reception -- April 30 (7 pm)
Final Written Report Due, Including Client Feedback -- May 3 (5 pm)