The engineering process is the sequence of structured steps engineers follow in order to design and build products. There are a variety of models of the engineering process, with fewer or additional steps. However they all follow a common pattern. In this article, we will examine a 9-step engineering design process that engineers employ to solve specific issues.
The initial step of the engineering design process involves delineating the issue. This is an essential step since failing to completely and precisely define the problem can stall projects later in the design cycle. Sometimes the solution to a particular issue will naturally appear in this stage. For instance when students were asked to come up with a solution to hold their school lunch hooks to the bottom of their desks, they came up with a simple solution of attaching a hook to bottom of the desk.
The next step is to conduct a requirements analysis in order to identify the specifics of customer needs and the resources available. This allows you to come up with a concrete set of project requirements and limitations. For instance when a client wants their new product to be able to hold 20 pounds an engineer will estimate how much weight the system is able to support and what size the hook should be to ensure that it is able to hold all of the student’s lunches.
The next phase is called design synthesis, also known as design planning, and is where the details are formulated and a precise design of the product is created. This involves setting up the interfaces, outputs, and inputs of the different modules that form the overall system. The tools used during this phase include Gantt and Pert charts, resource loading spreadsheets sketchbooks, drawings, and prototype models.