People leave work because of “limited recognition and praise” but they stay for “exciting, challenging work.” If the work is interesting but there is no recognition, will people leave? If the work is uninteresting but they are receiving praise, will…   Read more»

This was a nice and revealing question. I enjoyed reading everyone’s posts. I would stay and work for a company if the work interested me. I want a fulfilling career and life, I do not want to be stuck working…   Read more»

I feel as engineers we can take one of two career paths, administrative or research based. If you want to follow an administrative path, partiality is definitely an obstacle that will be faced. Partiality in the form of favoritism, talked…   Read more»

A collection of some drawbacks experienced by most risk analysis methods: 1. Slight variations between similar projects/medical devices. Difficulty estimating variations and their magnitude and impact. 2. Synergistic effects of several, combined risks. 1 + 1 = 3. 3. Information…   Read more»

I am definitely feeling the pressures of scope creep as I near closer to my Master’s defense. I made the mistake of waiting until the last month to run my most important and intricate experiment, not giving myself enough time…   Read more»

Simply, the rate of return is profit, it could be a dollar amount or percentage of how much was invested. It is impossible to know exactly what the rate of return is just as it is impossible to predict the…   Read more»

I don’t have any med-tech industry experience but I imagine the design review experience being tense for the product developing team. Passing a design review means completing a major milestone in the project development process and shows that the product…   Read more»

A product risk can be a faulty release mechanism on a drug delivering device. Under FMEA this would be a Concept Design / Hardware risk where we could monitor its probability of failure throughout its development process. Specifically, risk can…   Read more»

Recalls are a very interesting topic, nice post. Recalls are done, not by the company that designs and develops the product, but by the manufacturer or distributor. When these parties find that the medical device violates an FDA law (e.g….   Read more»

ECOs admit that no design is ever completely perfect, infallible. They are neither a positive or negative event, ECOs are an eventuality. The cause could be: a design error evident only during the testing phases of the product; change in…   Read more»

I was lucky enough to choose a Capstone project where we did not have to pay for anything, all of our parts were given to us from previous attempts at the project. However we later found out that the sensors…   Read more»

There are many reasons why tracking time is an important practice for any company or organization. Some include: 1) Following the progress of the project, how much time is needed to complete a certain task, is this time spent wisely,…   Read more»

A lot has already been said in this post, but teamwork and a PM’s handling of team management is a very important prevalent topic. I think the best approach is to set the rules right from the start. Explain what…   Read more»

I agree here. The suppliers you want to be dealing with are well-established and are known for their high quality materials. In fact build a relationship with these suppliers and do not burden the planning phase. Additionally, a good relationship…   Read more»

Some tools/techniques that can be used to assess quality assurance include: Fishbone Diagram. In this cause-and-effect type diagram factors causing a defect are listed as inputs and their combined efforts may output the possible defect. For example, inputs such as…   Read more»

When creating my group’s Gantt Chart I would organize our tasks considering the following (in order of importance): 1. What tasks must be completed before this task can begin? 2. What is an ideal time to complete this task? A…   Read more»

The most impactful lesson I have learned from this class so far is how applied research/basic science (that is, what we learn in our core classes) is just a small percentage of research and development and R&D is just a…   Read more»

Some enterprise environmental factors might include a sudden market niche for a particular product or a governmental decrease in sales tax for a particular resource. I would then argue that the proposed project should be initiated because there is a…   Read more»

My capstone project involved programming a 3-DOF admittance control hand exoskeleton for robotically facilitated training of the hemiparetic hand and an interactive, virtual 3D environment for its platform. We broke the project down by task and order of completion because…   Read more»

Missing a milestone might be the worst thing that can happen to a project. A milestone defines the completion of an important step in a project’s development process and task times are often dictated by it. If a milestone is…   Read more»