Using a product engineering process to manage an introductory mechanical engineering program

Abstract

"Discover Mechanical Engineering" (DME) is a student-run Freshman Pre-Orientation Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which, in the time since its inception in 2002, has developed into a popular, professional, and well-organized pre-orientation program MIT. Yet despite its success, it routinely experiences difficulties with respect to personnel and timeframes, both of which continually threaten the well-being of the program. It appears, however, that such difficulties are not a result of the students' motivational level, since all of DME's student volunteers contribute a great deal of time to the program. Rather, the problem may be that DME student leaders (and their supporting volunteers) are attempting to run the program prior to having taken MIT's Product Engineering Process course (also known as 2.009), a required senior-year mechanical engineering course which is expressly designed to teach students how to manage projects similar to DME. This course teaches tools most useful for the management of personnel and of time - the very areas which DME seeks to improve - through the use of Gantt charts, delineation of the project's critical path, and sundry other methods.

(cont.) It is reasonable to believe that bringing a Product Engineering Process methodology to DME would help rectify existing problems, thereby benefiting the program as a whole. This thesis studies the DME program, examines PEP approaches as potential solutions to recurring problems, and suggests several areas for further improvement of DME as a whole.