Robert Hurles individual reflection

Looking back at Design and Manufacturing 1, I realize that I learned a lot of real-life skills that I know will help me with my future careers. I learned a lot about the limits of manufacturing that can affect design, the benefit of true team-work, as well as the importance of managing time and making deadlines. There were many hardships faced throughout this semester, and at times it seemed like it was far too much work for only four credits. But in the end, I realized that everything was capable of being done, and I just had the find the most efficient balance of effort put in to productivity achieved.
In this class, I learned a lot about design and manufacturing. The most important thing I realized was how the limits of manufacturing can affect design. When we originally were trying to come up with strategies for how to move the ping pong balls, we came up with many different, often wild scenarios. We had ideas that included everything from vacuum shooters to throwing arms. However, what we realized was that many of these designs would be just too difficult to produce, and we would have to put in far too much effort for little production. We decided to keep our design simple, and make sure we were capable of manufacturing all of the components using the tools we had available to us. Although I have done a lot of manufacturing when I was younger around my house and at work, I learned many new skills including how to use the lathe and mill, which I know will be useful in the future.
Most of the work that all of us will be doing in our careers will be team-based. Because of this, I truly appreciate every class I have that requires team-work because I know it helps me improve my skills. From this class, I learned that I have to often be patient with other people, and that I have to trust my teammates often, since I did not have enough time to go over everyone’s work. I know that continuing to work in teams at the University of Michigan can only strengthen my skills as an engineer, and will help me be a better worker in the future.
Another important thing that this class emphasized was time management. This was obviously very important with this class considering the amount of work that we had to do. Because I was taking 17 credits, working after class, and doing many other things outside of the U of M, I had to work a lot towards being as efficient as possible. One very important lesson learned from this class was the idea of staying on the leading edge, and sometimes knowing when to stop working. Often you have to sacrifice perfection in order stay ahead because if you continue to focus on the little things, you will never be able to make the big steps needed in a project.
Overall, I think the course was pretty good, but there is definitely room for improvement. The lectures were packed with far too much content that did not seem relevant to the class, the first few weeks of the course did not seem to relate to our project very well, and I think that in general there was too much work considering it was only a four credit class. I believe that we should have started focusing on the project itself earlier and that teams should have been formed within the first two weeks with kits being given out immediately. Improving these aspects would make the course much more effective.
I think that I could have improved my performance in the course by working harder to understand the overall picture earlier, as well as not make as many sacrifices of quality in order to save time. I really did not understand what we were shooting for until we were well into the course and I think that hurt my original ideas on our strategies. Also, if we had focused more on getting things done right as oppose to getting them done quickly, our machine would have probably run better. Overall, it was a good class and as I said, I think it will help me greatly in both my future classes as well as my future careers.