Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 5-7-2022

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Jack McClurg

Second Advisor

Eddie Carr

Third Advisor

Denise Theobald-Roberts

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The goal behind this thesis is to document and analyze my performance as the project manager for the Customized Sidearm Case capstone team during the Center for Manufacturing Excellence’s senior capstone experience. The capstone experience begins the fall of students senior year where a select number of product ideas submitted by the students are chosen, and teams are built around these projects. The objective of the project is to walk a product from the concept phase through the entire design process resulting in a full-scale production run during the spring semester. My product pitch of a wooden sidearm case, customized to any of the six branches of the military, was one of the products selected by the CME faculty. I was selected as the team captain and assigned five other CME students to work with. Over the course of the design process the team focused on creating an initial prototype, conducting market research, building a business model, and setting up a final production run where the team’s processes and performance would be graded by the CME faculty. As the project manager I experienced several hurdles including design changes, budget expenses, and low team morale. However, I faced these challenges head-on and finished the capstone experience with a high-quality product delivered on-time and admired by several members of the CME faculty and staff. Over the course of the project, I learned several valuable lessons about project management I will be able to apply to my future career as a Marine Corps Officer and eventually as an engineer.

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Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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