Engineering Stack Exchange
Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [project-management]

23 questions
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I have inherited a product with inconsistent designs sharing the same part number. What do I do?

I am now in charge of a product line my company has been shipping for a decade. One of the previous product engineers was... shall we say, less than conscientious about sustainability and proper documentation. We have shipped hundreds of units, of…
Stephen Collings
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How to work on big CAD project in team?

I'm always confused on what is the effective way to work on CAD with multiple team members to make it efficient. So far, as I'm freshly graduated I only work on a project where I'm the only one using the CAD software. At best there's only two of us,…
el-cheapo
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4 answers

What's a professional way of tracking design history in plant engineering?

If you look at the design documentation in our projects (Biogas and waste-to-energy plants), you find out what we plan to build but not what other options were considered and why they were discarded. This information rests only in the engineers…
mart
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How do I form a budget for a mechanical research project?

I'm a mechatronics engineering student currently on workplacement. I've put forward a research proposal to develop an improved mechanical gripper used for automated product handling. The company likes the proposal and wants to go ahead with it, but…
Sam Weston
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6
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3 answers

Are latest software engineering methodologies, such as Agile, being adopted by other engineering disciplines?

I know comparatively little about general engineering methodologies, but it strikes me that the (now outdated) "waterfall" method is possibly very apt for mechanical engineering. Perhaps advances in rapidly changing software engineering could also…
Jayy
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2 answers

Going distant in sourcing machining

My North American facility is looking at a major shut down this fall. In the area, three other large facilities are also doing either shutdowns or expansions in the fall. A last minute project that I have been assigned requires a couple of weeks…
Myles
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What if project requirements depend on discoveries while designing?

I asked a question where a comment pointed out: Requirements are things that you should be drafting to figure out what you want, before you know exactly how you are going to solve it. I was doing it backwards. I was going to define requirements…
Jayy
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How to fairly distribute items when there is more demand than supply?

I have these 2 problems to solve (on the image). I have 9 stores that want different quantities of a product. The first store asked for 62 units, the second one 10 units, etc etc. The supplier sent a total of 138 units (case 1). I have to distribute…
Pat
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How can I arrange my ECO system to enforce the principle of least privilege?

Right now, changes to BOMs are executed through verbal or email instructions to an employee who serves as BOM gatekeeper. This means paper trails are almost non-existent. Who changed what and why is almost impossible to track down. I'm planning to…
Stephen Collings
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2 answers

How to estimate the time cost of interrupting a task and picking it up again later

In terms of personal productivity (single machine scheduling) when a task is interrupted before being done in order to switch to a different task, it incurres a 'tear down' time cost - putting tools, files, materials away etc. It also incurres a…
snowfrogdev
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Diff/merge for CAD in 2022?

I'm fairly new as an ME, recently graduated so I'm used to working solo. Wondering how teams collaborate and do version control when working on an assembly together. In software, git's diff/merge features are insanely helpful - for CAD I know of…
Fim Terris
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Where does one go to produce custom metal objects?

I am wanting to produce custom mass plates for a project, very similar to those found in gyms. Here's a rough idea of what each one should look like: This is essentially identical to mass plates one can buy online, however I am needing to produce…
Callum Tilbury
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Where to start with documenting an existing manufacturing process?

I’m part of a manufacturing company that makes a number of larger heavy-duty products. To give an idea of the complexity, we have CNC plasma cutters and hydraulic presses, saws, etc. but don’t use any real high-precision tools. Tolerances are…
Idk442
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Validation vs verification in mechanical engineering

I'm confused about what the difference between Validation and verification is in a mechanical engineering context please? Also, where in the engineering life cycle/design process are these steps? What I think they are: Validation: where you test a…
WarwixkD
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Mechanism to control spring release

okay so I’m trying to build a tennis ball launcher for my school so we can showcase it- my teacher helped me get motors and stuff setup similar to this image. Question: How would I include a spring so that (after we manually compress it) anyone can…
Edwin
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