MECH4270
Year 4 Project - Focused Manufacturing Design Report
Here is the suggested report organization. The specific content of the subsections may
vary depending on your particular project. Also, if you consider necessary you may
modify the names for subsection headings to fit your needs.
Title Page
Should contain:
● Course code and name
● Project title; subtitle: “Focused Manufacturing Design Report”
● Date
● Team members
● Project advisor(s)
Be creative with the title page. You may consider including an illustration or a
graphic which best defines the project. Use your graphic design abilities to create
a cover that looks professional and suggests an interesting content. Be careful,
though! Exaggerating with the graphic design will have the opposite effect.
Executive Summary
The ES (also called Abstract) is probably the most delicate part of the report. It is
intended for the busy executive who will read no further. Your job is to condense
the entire project into maximum two pages. Make sure the most important parts
are here. Imagine that your report goes to the CEO along with other reports
competing for project funding. Since no high level executive has time to read say
25 75-page reports, the decision will be made based o the Executive Summary.
The ES contains a summary of the substance of the report. Do it last and write it
carefully.
Table of Contents
Contributions (who wrote which sections or pages)
List all members of the team. Under each name, describe the contributions that
the team member made to the project, and the sections of the report that each
team member helped to write. This will be used to help assign your grade. ALL
team members should sign this page. By doing so, all team members may claim
authorship to the final report and can take credit for all the hard work they did
during the semester.
Glossary (optional)
The group should agree on a consistent use of technical terms or abbreviations.
Each new term should be either described when introduced or included in this
Glossary section that appears in the front of the report. If appropriate, define
terms through an annotated drawing.
1 Introduction (Contains the problem definition)
2 Focused manufacturing process
2.1 Bill of materials. (List the components of the assembly and specify which ones
are purchased and which ones are going to be produced in house.)
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2.2 Process organization. Choice and implementation of work cells for lean
production. (Based on the object of your design activity, breakdown product
manufacturing and assembly into linked u-shaped cells identifying steps for
each manufacturing process.)
2.3 Production equipment (For each manufacturing cell, determine equipment
requirements for each process.)
2.4 Detail manufacturing process flow map (From the breakdown create a
manufacturing flow map. Identify the order of each activity as well as any
parallel processes requirements. Identify component and material
transfer/delivery systems.)
3 Quality assurance
3.1 Quality control standards
3.2 Sampling and testing
3.2.1 Types of tests
3.2.2 Sampling and frequency
3.2.3 Jig/fixture requirements
3.3 Process FMEA
3.4 Control plan
4 Plant layout
4.1 Organization of lean production (Includes a review of the function of each cell
with space requirements, their arrangement for easy access, floor size
including access ways. Consider the requirements for an optimal production
process, flexibility, elimination of bottlenecks, JIT, etc. and how they apply (if
any) to your process)
4.2 Simulation of manufacturing plant (Use Flexsim to determine/verify the plant
capacity, balance the manufacturing lines, manage bottlenecks, solve
inventory and WIP problems, optimize production. Draw conclusions.)
4.3 Conclusions (Finalize/validate plant layout)
5 References
A bibliography containing all the sources of information that you used and cited
in your report. Each source should be cited in the IEEE style.
Appendices
The appendices should include any supporting documentation related to the
project that would interrupt the flow of information if included in the main body
of the report. Material which appears in appendices may include: parts drawings,
assembly drawings, detailed bill of materials, vendor data sheets, calculation
results, long equation derivations, software source code, test results, etc.
Each appendix is numbered and appears in the table of contents. Each appendix
should start with a few sentences describing what the appendix contains, unless it
is obvious such as a vendor data sheet. Avoid appendix inflation when possible.
For example, when including data sheets, only include those portions that were
relevant to your project.
Appendices may include the following (order is not important):
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1. Complete Bill of Materials (BOM) for your final design. The BOM
includes at a minimum the following for each part: (1) component name,
(2) complete model or part number, (3) price, (4) the name of the
manufacturer who makes the part, (5) distributor (where you buy it from).
Similar information should be documented for services you used (e.g., a
professional machine shop) or purchased (e.g., a software package).
2. List (or collection of drawings) of ALL the ideas you came up with
during concept generation. If applicable, sort the list by category
3. Supporting calculations and analyses
4. Key catalog or data sheet pages of components
5. CAD drawings
6. Anything else you think is important.
All appendices should be referred to in the body of the report. If you can't find a
place to do this in the report, the material probably is not worth including as an
appendix.
FORMAT
Type your report using a word-processor. Twelve point serif (e.g., Times or Times
Roman) font is recommended. However, sans serif fonts (e.g., Helvetica) can be used for
chapter and section headings, with larger, bold font. Number sections and subsections.
Use just the right amount of white space to separate sections. Look at professional
reports or books for ideas on style. Double space with ample (1.25" left and right, 1.00"
top and bottom) margins on all sides. Number each page in one sequence (i.e. do not
reset the numbering at chapter starts), including those in appendices. Use either
indentation or a blank line to mark new paragraphs, not both. If you can, copy
double-sided to save some trees, but make sure that major sections always start on the
right hand side. Make your report visually pleasing, an important part of communicating
the information.
Serif fonts (e.g.,) are generally easier to read for long reports.
SOME SUGGESTIONS
1. Have plenty of figures and drawings to explain and support your design.
2. When referring to your work in the report, use past tense.
3. Avoid using a story or chronological approach in your report ("first we did
this, then we tried that, then we finally decided on this").
4. Edit then proofread your report carefully before submitting. There should be n o
spelling errors. One spelling mistake greatly reduces your professional
credibility. Spell checkers do not catch all the errors.
Phrase to Eliminate Suggested Replacement
plugged into the equation placed into the equation
figure out determine
junk [eliminate]
figure 2-8 Figure 2-8 [capitalize]
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appendix 1 Appendix 1 [capitalize]
a lot of considerable
cheap inexpensive (or low cost)
assumptions had to be made assumptions were required
can't cannot
didn't did not
to quickly design to design quickly
The first thing First,
a couple of two
OK [eliminate]
in order to to
fairly, very [try dropping]
looked at considered
fairly good good
decided upon determined
in between between
significantly [try dropping]
[Adapted from University of Minnesota, Mechanical Engineering, Final Report]
[Link]
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