Armando's Engineering Portfolio
Personal Statement:
I am a Mechanical Engineering student at
State University of New York at Buffalo.
I went to high school at "Colegio
San Ignacio de Loyola"
catholic school in Caracas Venezuela, where I graduated in 1998. There I
participated in the "Centro Excurcionista Loyola" which is a center for hiking
and climbing and one of the most important organizations of its kind in
Venezuela. At that time I climbed the Humboldt peak, which is the second highest
peak in Venezuela with an altitude of 4942 meters. One of my biggest goals is to
climb one of the highest peaks in South America which is the Aconcagua in
Argentina since climbing is an enjoyable pastime of mine.
I attended the "Universidad
Metropolitana"
in Caracas from 1998 to 2000 where I studied Civil Engineering for four
semesters before I realized that I wanted to study Mechanical Engineering
because of my great passion for cars. Here you will find different Engineering projects I
made or participated in.
Letter of Recommendation:
Certificates:
Design Portfolio Requirements:
1. A reflection of how your design team(s) approached the design projects in this semester. Why were different strategies taken by each team? Why do teams operate differently? What role did you gravitate towards in the team?
-The first approach was to know every member of the team, it is very important to know the person you are working with because then you know his capabilities, you know if he or she is going to be a strong or weak member. After knowing each other we select a leader, normally the leader is the one with more knowledge about the project, or one that can take control of the team.
After that, the team start to work on the design project
that
in this case is the MAE 459 design project. In this project the main leader was
our advisor Dr. Kevin Hulme that help us organize the all project through the
semester, at the beginning every team member assumed a role in the project that
started to change with time. Every member developed and help each other to
create the final output that was the final project. In this project I did not
assume the role of leader, because I did not have sufficient knowledge about the
program used to create the virtual reality audio simulation, I think nobody knew
much about it, that's why Dr. Hulme was the leader in this case. I was in charge
of designing the final cockpit of the car that had to move according to the rest
of the program.
We need to know that not all teams are alike, they can differ on the type of outcomes. Teams should be properly configured and managed for the type of output that they are intended to produce.
Another project I was involved was the Micro Fluid-level Sensor
where I was the
leader and developed the steps for the fabrication of the sensor.
2. How you solve problems and why you think you solve problems this way. Also,
discuss how
some of your friends solve problems, design, imagine, and create (e.g., give
them a problem
they are unfamiliar with and observe them trying to solve it). Start with
roommates and
friends, but expand to other groups of people to see how their background
affects their
thought processes – children, elderly people, international students,
nonstudents, physically
challenged people, etc.
Exist two different ways of thinking, the first class are people who know how to think. These people realize that most problems are open to examination and creative solution. If a problem appears in the lives of these people, their intellectual training will quickly lead them to a solution or an alternative statement of the problem. The second class, the vast majority, are people who cannot think for themselves, they wander around in a gigantic open-air mall of facts and ideas. The content of their experience is provided by television, the Internet and other shallow data pools. These people believe collecting images and facts makes them educated and competent, and all their experiences reinforce this belief. The central, organizing principle of this class is that ideas come from somewhere else, from magical persons, geniuses. I think that I am in both classes, but the majority the majority of the time I am in the second one.
I remembered a problem that says: A birthday cake must be cut into eight equally
sized pieces. However, you are allowed to make only 3 straight cuts. the
Question: How can the cake be cut into eight pieces with only 3 straight cuts?
at first, all the people I asked told me than that was impossible, that you
needed at least 4 cuts to do that. I told them that it was possible, the only
thing to do was to doing it thinking out of the box. After a while and
explaining that the cake was created in 3D they finally got it.
Normally everybody
feels that it is impossible, people try to find the solution the easy way
without thinking that you can cut a cake in many different ways.
3. Your progress in developing your abilities to think creatively. Include all
exercises that you
have used to increase your creativity.
-Through this semester I thought of different ways to be more creative, one of the most important is to think that there are no bad ideas, just wrong concepts to problems solutions. Another is that to think creatively you need to be in a relaxed environment, a place that one feels comfortable, some place that inspired you, not a room with 4 white walls. I started to be more creative when I started to pay more attention to it. I Wrote down my ideas to encourage and increase my creativity. I kept like a journal. I did this regularly, and I noticed that I had more ideas while I was writing. I have been thinking more abstract than normal, forgetting about physics laws to see and write any idea that can be done. Here are some steps to be more creative when resolving a problem.
-If the problem you are need to solve has already been solved by others, by all means learn that solution first, even if you intend to improve on it.
-Begin by solving the simplest version of the problem.
-Build your solution incrementally.
-Avoid focusing on a single solution.
-Avoid hidden assumptions.
-Be patient and persevere.
-Don't expect to find permanent answers.
4. Your own reading list – books and articles – that you have read and are
relevant to the
material in this course.
The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker. 14
Management Principles From The World's Greatest Manufacturer.
This book explains the ways to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry. In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.
The
Machine That Changed the World by James P. Wormack, Daniel T Jones,
Daniel Roos. The Story of Lean Production
This book was written by the three senior managers of the International Motor Vehicle Program. It was a program born out of an international conference to announce publication of their previous book, The Future of the Automobile, in which they examined the problems facing the world motor-vehicle industry in 1984. They found out that Lean production raises the threshold of acceptable quality to a level that mass production cannot easily match. It offers ever-expanding product variety and rapid responses to changing consumer tastes. It lowers the amount of high-wage effort needed to produce a product, and it keeps reducing it through continuous incremental improvement
The
Abs Diet by by
David Zinczenko,
Ted Spiker
The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You
Lean for Life.
This book tries to make you change your eating habits to create strong abs and a flat stomachs, which are the ultimate indicator of overall health-for both men and women. Great abs will help you live longer, sleep better, prevent back pain, and significantly improve your sex life. It consists of a diet and exercise plan for six weeks. When I saw the book I remembered that this is like to redesign a way of eating, that have the same system requirements than a normal engineering design, the diet needs to have all the nutrients and vitamins the human body requires.
5. A “good” design list – examples of designs that you think are particular
noteworthy for their
effectiveness, efficiency, and/or elegance.
Well I have to say that the best design right know is the
apple IPOD nano
,
its just incredible how in a few years the technology have grow to reduce the
size of MP3 players.
Another good design is the way Jet blue Airlines function, every seat has a TV, all seats are leather seats, and the simplicity of the ticket system is amazing, I think Jet Blue is right now the best airline in the US.
Another good design right now is the 2006 Lexus IS 350
,
I went the other day to test drive and the car is amazing, the exterior looks
elegant and at the same time looks like a sport car, inside is all luxury, has
so many features, and the most impressive is that you don't need a key to open
or start the engine, just a micro chip that stay in your pocket.
I discovered long time ago the AUTO mode on the headlight control in cars, is apparently designed to prevent one from leaving the headlights on when the engine is off. In AUTO mode, the headlights automatically go on when the engine is turned on, and off when the engine is off.
6. A “bad” design list – examples of designs that you think are inefficient,
ineffective, inelegant,
or provide solutions to problems that are not worth solving. These can be
products that
simply irritate you as well.
-A
bad Design would be this parking lot lane defroster
which
is too expensive to produce for what it would accomplish.
-One of the designs that irritates me the most is the loud noise a Coca-Cola can makes when its being opened, I can not open a can late at night because everybody can hear that I am drinking coke.
-Can you guess
which side of the bar to press to open the middle door?
There is no obvious
visual indication. If you press on the wrong side (the side with the hinges) it
is very difficult to push open. It takes a lot of force.
-
This
is the center console in a rental car showing how the cup holder is blocking
access to the radio and cassette player. Its nice to have a cup holder, but this
isn't a very good spot for it. Not only is it hard to use the radio, but if your
drink spills, its going into the cassette player!
7. A list of subjects that you would like to know more about and why?
-I want to learn more about solar panels and wind turbines, I think this will be the future in achieving clean energy, and it will help people save a lot of money.
-I would like to do some more research about on the stock market, so in future investments I can do better than in the competition this semester.
-I want to learn how to fly a helicopter, I would like to take a course on how to fly helicopters just to have fun and to always have other work options.
-Another thing I want to learn is Japanese, I think that will help me find a job in the auto industry (TOYOTA). And another subject I want to keep studying is the auto manufacturing as maybe you saw in my reading list.
8. A list of personal design problems that interest you. Include problems where
the design is for
you specifically AND problems that you think can be improved or created
primarily for
others. Also include a list or examples of any products, devices, trinkets,
processes, or
anything else that you have designed or are designing.
(check my design projects here)
-I can't answer this question the way you want because I am thinking to patent my design in the future, so is a secret, but I got a few other design that I can describe. I am designing a refrigerator that can be used in the living room without anyone notice its there, I hate to go to the kitchen when I am watching TV, so one solution is to create like a coffee table refrigerator, but in an elegant way. You also can put foods like dips for the chips there or beer.
Another thing I want to design is a house where you can turn on or off almost everything by using a computer, I know this already exist, but I haven't see it in any house, it will be nice to control de air conditioning from your laptop, and change the temperature on different rooms.
I designed a few standard hangers for all the commercial line models in Toyota de Venezuela last summer, you can see the designs here, those designs helped reduce production time and reduced the risk workers injuries, because the worker wont have to change hangers between models.
9. Develop your design philosophy and your design strategy. This will be a
compilation and
reflection of the previous entries and should provide some synergy to your
portfolio. Your
philosophy should include descriptions of what should be designed, what
constraints should
be placed on design, what criteria should be applied to the definition of a
“good” design, what
makes a “bad” design, and how your strengths, background, and insights would
apply to
designing new products, systems, and devices.
First to develop a design we need a problem, something to solve, could be a common problem, or just to improve something that already exists. I need to be in design mode, design thinking is inherently a prototyping process. Once I spot a promising idea, I try build it. The prototype is typically a drawing, or a model that describes the product, system, or service. When I build these models; they're rough, ready, and not at all elegant, but they work and with time they can be elegant and promising. My goal isn't to create a close approximation of the finished product or process, my goal is to find a feedback that helps me work through the problem I am trying to solve.
Even after I've rolled out my new product, service, or process, I am just getting started. In almost every case, I move on to the next version, which is going to be better because I've had more time to think about it. I believe you never stop designing, every day we will be thinking of how to improve something.
To create a good design, the only thing we need is that the design resolve the problem it need to solve, and that not just solve the problem, but people use it for the purpose created. A bad design will be any design that creates a problem when solving its purpose or when is not clear the same purpose.
10. What did you learn in this class?
-First I want to say thanks for this amazing course, the way you teach this class is excellent, I did not just learned the Design Methods, but I learned in a fun way, this class opened a window to reality, a window to the next level. One of my worries is that you never know what to expect after graduation, Mechanical Engineering is so broad that you never know where you are going to work or what exactly you are going to be doing. This class taught me everything I needed to know to make that first step in any company. Thanks
-This class help me developed my mind and taught me how to think creatively, it taught me to think outside the box. I think that with this portfolio you can see that I was able to increase my creativity skills, that I think that was the most important thing I learned in this course. At the end, to succeed as a designer career you need to be very creative.
if you want to see pictures from my country Venezuela go to photos here