Recommendations and Lesson Learned

Time/Schedule:

Lesson#1:

When the team starts working on the scope, ambitious ideas dominated the discussion. As the team started working on the project, it was realized that the ideas cannot be accomplished in the limited time available. Therefore, the scope had to be minimized. The lesson is to try to make a realistic scope from the beginning and would save the time, the effort and the cost of the project.

Lesson#2:

They realized the importance of scheduling contingency work in case a task takes more than expected time. This was a suggestion by Prof. Volkening. In fact, without it, the project SPI would be much lower. The lesson learned is to have contingency work scheduled in every phase that has a risk of delay.

Budget/Cost:

Lesson#3:

Doing the EVA calculation on weekly basis helped the team understating the project cost status and anticipated the need to have extra money. The CPI is not just a number to evaluate the project. It is an indication if more money is needed to be injected into the project. It can give the project manager the time to gather extra needed funds without putting the project on hold.

Lesson#4:

Having a subtle design in the planning phase helped the team keep the cost to a minimum. Major changes to the design would have a huge impact on the cost. The team had to do minor changes which did not affect the cost. However, the team did not have spare parts or consideration for alternate parts. The lesson learned is always to have extra parts with different features in case you need to change the design if the time and the scope are more important than the cost.

Individual Lessons Learned:

Rodrigo Dei

Multiple lessons were present in every step of this process. From the smallest ones, such as not knowing that all the digital pins in the Arduino were PWM, to the most important lesson, which was learning the code to properly position the shaft of a motor by using the PID control algorithm.

Moreover, Rodrigo was delighted to learn about the real tolerances/dimensions between the CNC parts machined by the supplier versus those parts measured by himself once arrived. That might appear to be insignificant but from the design point of view, it could be critical because the designer must know the real accuracy of the products from the supplier. If that is not the case, tolerances should be added to those in the suppliers' specifications while designing in order to avoid issues when assembly. That will be a common practice in the future for him.

Tareq Badra

The first lesson learned in this project was about the effect of the program on the electrical design. Tareq learned that certain libraries such as the servo library can deactivate pins 9 and 10. This discovery helped him solve the issue of programming the robot on the X, Y and Z-axis. Therefore, a modification in the electrical design and pin assignment had to be done (Figure 15).

The second lesson is understanding how the line in the program does work. The order of the lines, how many loops are needed and when to get out of the loop were all learned in this project. The major programming issue was solved by adjusting the program lines order.