This semester during my capstone project we had not anticipated a few delays, and learned a couple lessons. As a team we added additional tests to validate our design, but did not sit down and discuss all possible risks. During testing, one of our 3D pieces that we printed as an attachment to a force sensor kept breaking under the required load to test our product. We did not discuss the 3D printed material strength in comparison to what we had to test. This resulted in delays of our tests as we needed to 3D print new pieces before we could conduct our test. The lesson learned is that there should always be risk analysis and group discussion done on smaller tasks.

I was recently part of a small project at work which involved me figuring out a solution for an audit finding they recently had. I spent a while working on the solution, looking for and putting codes together until it worked. I also had to contact a lot of people, change a part, and work on validations. In the end my team decided to go with a different solution. Although I was disappointed, I did learn a lot about codes and putting them together so in the end it did benefit me. I also learnt about the validation process and possible risks to consider when making decisions.

Over a year ago I was assigned to manage the development of a robotic device. We had a prototype and since it is now first to file, we filed a patent so we could further the development while also pitching to outside companies to see if we could get a collaborator. At the time, the device did not have the resources or funding available that it needed to create a functional clinical prototype. Time had passed and then we received the funding we needed to contract out, by that time we did not finalize the design and we were at the PCT conversion deadline. We still wanted to keep the priority filing date, but we also did not want the patent to publish and needed more time to work on the final design elements that we would ultimately want to have protected in the patent. This created a very complex patent strategy which incurred more patent costs than we would normally have for a device. Overall I learned for projects moving forward that unless there are imminent public disclosures, it makes sense to have a more concrete design and functional prototype before filing and setting realistic deadlines so that the PI, patent counsel, and key stake holders are all on the same page and making sure that the technology development timeline complements the patent prosecution timeline.

There was a project that I was on that we should have spent more time in the research phase. We were culturing cells for this project and there was one very old article that we found a few weeks after the project had finished that mentioned that we should try to culture the cells in spinner flasks and that would increase the growth rate of the cells because they were in suspension and not attached. Once we ran this test it was clear that this was a better route to take and we updated everything after the fact which cost us some more money but saved overall in the end.

In the last project that I worked on, a major source of delay for the project came from lack of project resources. Resources which were needed in the second half of the project were promised to the team at the beginning of the project, however when the time came the resource was no longer available. The project progress was significantly slowed down until a replacement was dedicated to the project team. The lesson here was in resource management - making sure that the resources that were promised are still available, and being able to adapt when certain resources are no longer available.

At the completion of my capstone project, the most important learning that I took away from it was the importance and significance of the Planning stage during a project. Though the project was completed in time, if we had deviced an effective Design Development Plan. This would have provided us with the oppurtunity to carry out more experiments and tests, thus decreasing the task load in the verification and validation stage of the project.

With a capstone project I was involved in, a major lesson we learned was adjusting the project scope due to limitations found in the design. With this project, one of the parts of the device required a much higher manufacturing precision that we were capable of producing given our budget and time frame. This caused us to select our second choice design to replace that part, which altered the final design's capabilities.

This semester I am in part 2 of my capstone project. We have all of our protocols written to begin construction and testing but we are missing one key component of the device. The materials got delivered about a month ago. Purchasing, the company, and the professor told us the order was there. In the meantime we could not start testing until our training was done so we waited a week or two and got trained. In the meantime, none of the group members went to go check all of the materials. This past week when we went to start, when checking the components we realized that one of the products was missing which happened to be a key component. When calling the company we found out it is back-ordered until a date past our deadlines. Until we called the company, no one told us this was back-ordered. As a solution, we had to spend more money to rush ship a replacement to this component. However, even with the rush shipping, it shortens our testing period by a lot since we have to go through purchasing. As a result, we missed some milestones on our Gantt chart and are struggling to get this testing done in time by all putting in extra hours. The mistake of not checking the components when they came in costed us both time and money. From now on, as long as I am able to, I will always check the parts myself when they come in. If we checked right away, we could have ordered the new component a month ago and it would have been here.

So I was working on my Capstone project for which we received sponsorship. It was a automated muscle stimulator for atrophy patient. While working on the project we first laid down timeline and we made milestone to complete and since our project was funded we really had to make this deadline but while making all this deadline we didnt set our material requirement and check if everything we required was at our disposal or not and it came out that the micro processor we required was not readily available and we had to wait for atleast one month to get it and since we didnt have micro proseccor we really couldn't test our code on the cheap and this also increased our cost since now we had to order more processor to make sure if any poof them goes bad while burning our code or our circuit. So we learnt that before making our timeline its important to see if major materials are readily available or not and if not adjust the timeline accordingly.

During my internship, I reviewed lengthy documentation as part of my summer-long project and recorded my findings in an Excel workbook. I was not aware of all of the shortcuts and tools offered in Excel. As a result, organizing my findings did not go as smoothly. As the project progressed, I became more comfortable using shortcuts and other helpful tools. From this project, I learned a valuable lesson in expanding my skill set outside of the classroom. For example, advanced Excel skills can be extremely useful in data analytics and task completion as it increases work efficiency if used correctly.

I recently worked on a Capstone Project where we had to design and construct a medical device. After completing the project, the biggest lesson I learned was to be more proactive. Instead of waiting for due dates/deadlines, it would have been much better if our team had been more proactive and had documentation/designs/prototypes completed way before deadlines. If we had done so, we would have had more time for testing to ensure the product worked and was the best it could have been.