Assignment Brief

Scenario:

You work as a design engineer for a developing manufacturing company and have been asked to meet with a potential customer. The customer is a charity that provides and installs fresh water bore holes in developing countries. You have been asked to provide a mechanism for pumping water out of a bore hole.

It should be assumed that the bore holes are likely to be in remote areas. As such they should be human powered only, and should be designed for ease of installation in mind.

Once installed, the charity is not located within the communities, therefore any ongoing maintenance will need to be managed within the community. As such ease of use, and availability of parts/materials needs to be considered.

It should be expected that the pump is used daily for a minimum of 10 years, and could be a life-line for a small community (up to 50 people).

Some critical design features:

Depth of the bore hole to the water surface is minimum of 1.5m.

Pump should be powered only by human input (no electrical power available), and should be capable of being operated by a 95 percentile male or female within the age ranges of 14 to 65 with regards to size and strength.

The pump should be capable of providing 1L of water in a 2 minute period of operation, but could be used for extended periods of 30minutes at a time.

Task:

Produce a report which contains the follow sections:

Outline of the problem and understanding of the customer brief

Research the current designs of human powered driven pumps.

Detailed Design Specification which meets all the customer requirements

Present project schedule for the design of the product (including sequence and timing of each activity)

Evaluate which design methodology you are using and explain why.

Identify the critical path activities on your plan and what impact they may have on the project.

Critically analysis other industry standard design briefs (on any product) and compare them with your own.

Submission Format:

A formal report with appropriate use of structure and referencing.