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Progress Update

Customer Needs Assessment

Preliminary design specifications

Conclusion

Appendix
 
 

This document has been generated so that the CEO of our company and our client are up to speed on the design and development of our system.

Through consultation by E-mail and face to face interviews, as well as measuring the current Sea water Flume, we have come up with a set of preliminary design specifications. This document is by no means final with regard to the specifics of any future system chosen. It acts as a guideline for design concepts as well as commercially available systems.

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We have had met with Dr. Thistle on the Florida State University campus as well as the Marine Research Facility at Alligator Point. In our interviews the client has stated the following item of which the Temperature regulator would have to perform:

Client Needs and Wants Statement

            - Be able to set temperature on controller before or during operation and temp maintain within 2 degrees of setting
            - Cooler must be environmentally inert
            - No major changes to existing equipment
            - Can be detached and replaced if setup must be moved
            - Exposed metal surfaces must be marine alloys
            - Must be long lasting and reliable
            - Easily to operate
            - System must be safe to operate
            - Should be able to manually shut off
            - All electronics and electrical wiring should be marine quality
            - System components easily replaced or fabricated at local hardware stores or in machine shop
            - Design should be done as quickly as possible
            - Design should have minimum cost or have features and speed of availability to -make worthwhile

Taking these statements, we conducting brainstorming secessions to see what we were looking to accomplish. We needed to control the temperature. At this stage we could not determine the best way to accomplish this. This led to the creation of a design specification list. By quantifying the wants and needs into numbers, times, values and materials, we then could decide on an overall system function as well identifiable sub functions.

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When we were at the Florida State University Marine Lab, we took measurements of the current system. We also asked questions and ran experiments to gather initial data on how the system performed. This lead to the current specifications below:

Design Team Specifications:

            - Temperature control maintains temperature within 2 Degrees
            - Metal surfaces are to be covered in Glass, plastic, or PVC (type TBD)
            - Metal surfaces that are in sea water flow are to be of Marine alloys of Stainless steel or Aluminum (TBD)
            - Intake and out-take of system are to be made of 4 inch PVC
            - System repairs due to wear and corrosion should be after 4 years or continuous use
            - All wiring in system conforms to Electrical Engineering codes
            - Design to be assembled by two people
            - Design fail-safe shuts off system in 1/1000 of second on electrical failure
            - Must be able to maintain temperature when all four pumps are on
            - Flow through the cooling system is greater than 8.13kg/sec
            - One person controls system
            - System has power on indicator light
            - System cost capped at $3000
            - System can run continuously for 48 hours
            - Temperature control can be tuned within range of 90 degrees to 40 degrees
            - Design phase to be completed by 12/04/2000
            - Designs in Pro E for machinist to generate
            - All piping water tight
            - Temperature monitor has thermocouple in sea water stream

These specifications provide us with a better understanding of what needs to be done. Some of the specifications are noted by "TBD". This means that the data for finalizing a value at this phase is not yet complete. In the coming weeks we will fill out each of those in more detail. From these we came up with a basic design Black box (Figure 2.3). This shows what critical system would be needed to accomplish the task of maintaining the water temperature. These are Measuring the water temperature, drawing water into the cooler, cooling the water, fail safes to stop the system in the event of failure or exposed wires, and returning water to flow stream. Once this was generated, the question of how the system would perform became apparent. We will need the assistance of Electrical Engineers to develop a saltwater safe system, but first we needed to have an idea of how the system would go about the process of monitoring and cooling the water. From our discussions, we put together a "Control logic Schematic" (Figure 2.4). This provides the basis of how the electronic control would be performed. For the physical system design, our team broke the system into six major parts. This is almost identical to the design black box except it includes the systems mounting. From this we decided on initial concepts that would accomplish each of the six critical subsystems for our design (Figures 2.1 and 2.2).

Looking back at the specification list and client's statement, we then realized that we did not have a clear-cut listing of the importance of the individual needs provided and quantified. The next phase was to design a house of quality (Table 2.1). This took the nineteen specifications and put them against various categories (such as operator, price, safety, and etc..). We ranked the relationship between the specification vs. the categories to see which would objectively be the first to be focused upon. We also did a matrix on the top to compare the relationships between the categories. We ranked the systems based on 9’s, 3’s, 1’s, and blanks. Nines showed the strongest relationships while 1’s were marginally related. A blank space represents trivial or no relationship between the categories. This helps to show us where we should put our focus.

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We are able to identify areas we need to concentrate on after using the "House of Quality". From the listing the importance of various relationships, we found that the number one constraint to be the cost of the device. This was followed by safety and operator issues. Having this knowledge will help us to decide on a system, which will fulfill the most relationship. This in turn will help develop our "Work Breakdown Structure" for the remaining semester. By sitting down and deciding on importance of systems, we now know which to tackle first and which will be the last to handle (such as the actual number of parts and Pro E drawings).

Our next step is to take the design function concepts we sketched and produce six designs. We would then evaluate them on how closely they fulfill or exceed customer requirements.

We are still in the initial stages of the design process. At this time we still are discussing concepts with our client, and have generally agreed to specifications. Upon completion of the Work Breakdown Structure, we will have a bed rock foundation to go forward. Once this is accomplished. Our company, and client will sign an alpha stage specification document.

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Figure 2.1 Design concepts for various systems
 
 

Figure 2.2 Design concepts for systems continued
 
 

Table 2.1 Design House of Quality

Figure 2.3 Design Black box for system operation
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Figure 2.4 Development of System Operation Logic

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