The thing that motivates me the most is knowing that what I help create will one day end up inside someone – making their life better. As a BME, we have an innate feel to improve patient care through physical products or research.

However, on a more direct level, I am really motivated by the satisfaction of fixing issues. In one of my previous…[Read more]

The thing that motivates me the most is knowing that what I help create will one day end up inside someone – making their life better. As a BME, we have an innate feel to improve patient care through physical products or research.

However, on a more direct level, I am really motivated by the satisfaction of fixing issues. In one of my previous…[Read more]

I too am not surprised by the results of this study. Everyone that I’ve encountered in the workforce are genuinely excited to work. In my experience, I have not met a person that is unmotivated or sluggish because he or she does not want to work. I think for me personally, one of the reasons why I really like working is because I believe in the…[Read more]

I too am not surprised by the results of this study. Everyone that I’ve encountered in the workforce are genuinely excited to work. In my experience, I have not met a person that is unmotivated or sluggish because he or she does not want to work. I think for me personally, one of the reasons why I really like working is because I believe in the…[Read more]

I did not experience this first hand, but I was part of huge project where the company was shifting from one sterilization method to another. This project involved every single department and it was really a company wide effort. I’m sure you can imagine that when you have to shift sterilization methods, the sterility team plays a huge role in the…[Read more]

During one of my internships, I had one big project that I had to divide up into several smaller parts. Each individual component used a whole different set of tools and doing them all at the same time would only confuse me. So essentially, what I ended up doing was spending a lot of time on the critical part of the project and really focusing on…[Read more]

One of the projects that I worked on was to look at prints and analyze the prints for any errors or risks. I was given a CAD file of the design and had to run FEA on the design and look at areas of high stress or potential failures. As an intern, I wasn’t given a critical component but just to get the experience I was given a case that contained…[Read more]

I’ve had the experience to sit in on a design review meeting and what I noticed was the culture was not as strict as I thought. There was a moderator who was basically the person that called the meeting together. He made sure every detail was given a chance to be talked about. The documents had to be reviewed prior to the meeting by the reviewers…[Read more]

From what I experienced in the industry, ideally the project should follow Initiating, Planning, Executing, Closing process but as the project continues you’ll find yourself still going back and forth – but not to a degree that will significantly cause delays. If you think about it, it’s really hard to plan everything before execution and…[Read more]

For one of my projects at work I had to figure out a way to sort through a whole bunch of data and easily find something that was needed. Because we use MATLAB in school, I decided to use MATLAB to do what I needed. I began writing a whole bunch of lines of code and it turned out that the code was taking longer than I expected. The next day when I…[Read more]

For my capstone project, we were required to set up a budget and track the changes as we have to purchase material. One of our costliest materials is a resin used to 3D print the material that our final product will be made of. In theory it costs about $700. We had set up a goal to be below $1000. The school ended up having some sort of contract…[Read more]

I had the chance of sitting in on a design review meeting – although I was not an active participant in the review. I thought it was an interesting experience and I learned quite a bit from it. One thing that I noticed right off the bat was how professional the review was. There was a moderator who was in charge of the review and he made sure…[Read more]

I sort of agree with what you are saying, and had the same question. Obviously when looking at vendors, one must take into account the price of their raw materials and the services that they perform. I agree that something like this should be done in the planning phase rather than the executing phase. The way I thought about it was let’s say you…[Read more]

I sort of agree with what you are saying, and had the same question. Obviously when looking at vendors, one must take into account the price of their raw materials and the services that they perform. I agree that something like this should be done in the planning phase rather than the executing phase. The way I thought about it was let’s say you…[Read more]

These issues are common in any industry. There will always be people that are unavailable due to vacation or sick leave. This can impact the life-cycle of the project and possibly delay some parts of the process. The key to mitigate delays due to these issues is by establishing proper communication. Once proper communication is established, there…[Read more]

I think another big issue that’s faced by project managers is proper risk management. Typically whenever you don’t know the answer to something, you have to follow proper risk management process. Risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing and responding to risk factors throughout the life of a project. It is the job of the project…[Read more]

I agree with a lot of the posts in this thread. I also believe that missing a milestone is a bad thing. While I do understand the point that you are trying to bring up in that a delay is not necessarily a bad thing because it sort of serves as a quality checkpoint. However, because you missed this milestone, you’re delaying the rest of the…[Read more]

I think that in general the entire project management “outline” is similar regardless of the industry or the country. There may be minor nuances that are different but overall, the concept is relatively similar. When I was interning, there was a big project going on across multiple sites in different countries. As someone mentioned, one of the key…[Read more]

This is also my first course with Dr. Simon. I am currently in my last semester of my undergrad and I have had a couple of interviews for full-time positions. In all of those interviews I’ve been asked about FDA regulations and in some cases questions based on how I would handle a project. I can say without a doubt that this class has helped me…[Read more]