You should have adhered to the PDS throughout the Embodiement and Detail Design Phases. Figure 1 is similar to that presented when forming the PDS in the Planning and Clarifcation Section. Note, that the arrows now point back up the model, suggesting this stage should retrospectively review the model to ensure it’s fit for purpose.
Figure 1 – Finalisation of PDS model
Standards and Specifications – You should have been updating the definitions and regulations as you progressed. Your final product should now adhere to all of them, ensure it does.
QFD – Check back with the output of your QFD, if your product falls short of acheiving your targets, why? If it exceeds any, your product maybe over designed.
Constraints and Criteria – should have led the writing of the QFD, however, if your item differs, try and work out why.
Customer Requirements – These are where you started. So at the very least, your product shoudl acheive these, if it doesn’t, work out why.
Once you’ve completed the Final PDS, you may have discovered areas where your product does not fulfill the brief. You should not comment on this in the PDS, but in the Conclusions and Recommendations section that will be the last chapter in the report (See MAE Report Writing Guide for Engineers on CURVE or on Moodle). Any differences will give you a great deal to comment on. Where an Individual Project is concerned, like the one you complete in your final year of study, this is an excellent area to reflect on problems that occured leading to the requirements changing. You may also, in this latter case, want to list your orginal project objectives (ie the Customer Requirements) and demonstrate exactly how they been acheived, using the PDS as specific example. This will make it a lot easier to demonstrate you conclusion to your supervisor.
Read through the current revison of the PDS and ensure your design conforms to it. Remember it is a dynamic document. This means it should have changed throughout the project.
When you originally formed the PDS we suggested you will add to the document throughout; as stated in the Form PDS section “by the end of the project, the PDS will describe in writing the product to be manufactured and marketed” (Dieter and Schmidt 2009: 111).
You should thoroughly review your PDS and presented as its own section in the report, presented as per BS7373.
You have now completed the MAE Design model and have lots to talk about as you integrate it into your report.
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