ENGG200/300: Reflective Essay on System Engineering in Elevator Design

This document presents a student's reflective essay on their experience in an elevator design project for ENGG200/300. The reflection focuses on the importance of system thinking, collaboration, prioritization, and focus in achieving project goals. The student discusses how the project highlighted the need for teamwork, frequent communication, and understanding how individual contributions impact the overall system functionality. Furthermore, the reflection emphasizes the significance of prioritizing tasks and maintaining focus on critical path items to ensure timely project delivery and effective time management. The essay concludes by underscoring the professional growth gained through this project, particularly in collaboration and project coordination.

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System thinking
The working of an elevator must be able to coordinate different parts and ensure that
it is able to carry the designed loading with effectiveness. During the course of this project,
we were tasked with designing and modelling an elevator which will achieve high
effectiveness considering all situations. The situation here was to come up with a proper
working model which depicts the real situation of an elevator in a building considering all
factors (Paques, Liu, & Pu, 2016). The design and construction of the elevator required
collaboration as well and sharing of the tasks. The project was important for professional
lessons and also teaching the importance of teamwork. This project involved the use of three
different teams to deliver the project. Coordination and system thinking are some of the
critical items which were achieved to the individual members during the delivery of the
project.
The project required proper system thinking and coordination in order to deliver a
working project. First, we were able to analyse the key and critical situations which our
projects must be able to meet. The weight needed to be carried, the speed and also the safety
analysis. All these parameters are critical in affecting the output of the project. We were able
to list of the major activities and items needed in order to complete the modelling of this
project. This situation required high collaboration and teamwork to achieve the required
standards of model. The coordination ensured that none of the tasks were left out during the
planning and execution stage.
During the design and construction of the elevator, were able to allocate different
duties to different member. The timelines for delivery of the project were strict and in order
to meet them, sharing of the tasks was high encouraged. This taught the members the
importance of working under strict deadlines and delivering their tasks. In addition, we kept
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close look on all the members and ensured that system functionality was achieved. Teamwork
was high encouraged to be able to pull all the project resources and action through. The
professional working was highly learnt during this project and coordination of activities. The
teams were able to enhance the frequent reporting to ensure that system thinking and
functionality was achieved. Personally, the project taught me the need to collaborate and
ensure frequent updating on a system.
The collaboration taught the members the need to have teamwork on every step. The
project required continuous updating and collaboration to ensure that the elevator project was
able to function as required (Crowley, 2013). Different teams were in charge of different
responsibilities but all of them were leading to the same output. The system thinking was
important to help in achieving the goals of the project. The system thinking ensured that the
teams were using the same scenarios to help in coming up with outputs which can function in
the same system. This is important in helping individuals in collaboration when they are in an
organizational system. Generally, the system thinking was able to promote the holistic
thinking in individual members on the way their parts would function on the entire system.
Prioritization and focus
Many of systems are able to fail due to lack of proper planning, prioritization and
focus on the items on critical path. In order to deliver a project with many systems,
prioritization and focus on key elements is important. For instance, one cannot start building
an elevator and then deciding the loading at the final stages. The situational analysis is
important to ensure that prioritization of the activities is well done. This is a planning activity
which ensures that all activities are allocated their weight and the time they need to be done
(Rich, Elia, Jones, & 2013 21st Mediterranean Conference on Control & Automation
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(MED), 2013). In this project, I was able to engage on the prioritization activity. First the
goals are set and the different activities are well organised. The prioritization was able to
provide the major activities which needed more focus and the timelines for their delivery.
The design and construction of the elevator required the need to have analysis of the
different activities such as the balancing and weight distribution, materials to be use for the
elevator, dimensioning, communication and power wiring of the different parts and devices
among other activities. By engaging on this project, I was able to learn on the prioritization
on the different tasks at hand. I leant that the focus on the major items on critical path ensured
that the project would be delivered on time. The allocation of timelines to different tasks was
carried out to help in the prioritizing of activities. This helped me to acquire additional skills
on the planning of activities.
All activities need to be coordinated to help in proper functionality of the system and
effectiveness of the project. During the prioritizing, some key activities were different more
focus according to the schedule and urgency they needed to be executed. The proper
actioning of the activities helps to achieve the targets after the prioritizing and focusing on
the designed schedule (Jun, Chongjun, Junyuan, & 2014 IEEE 26th International Conference
on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), 2014). The prioritizing and focus of the
activities helped me to realize that coordination was important after the prioritizing to ensure
that the project is well effected and completed. Coordination helps to eliminate any
constraints on different activities which are allocated to other parties. The focus is done to the
activities which are hard to deliver to ensure that the completion is achieved.
I learnt that the prioritization of activities was able to lessen the difficulty in
delivering the same tasks. After prioritizing, the allocation of duties was done according to
the priority and this meant that the urgent tasks got more team members to ensure that the
activities do not delay. More focus was done to such activities to ensure that their delivery is
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on time. The focus on such activities was important for the time management. The
prioritizing and focus ensured that the design and construction of the elevator was according
to the schedule. Each activity had its how time of delivery and focus on the priority was
helping. Some members would lose focus and teamwork would help them to the delivery of
the tasks. This was important and a great lesson for the individuals and helped me to grow on
a professional capacity.
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References
Crowley, J. L. (January 01, 2013). Coordinaton of Action and Perception in a Surveillance
Robot. Ieee Expert, 2, 4, 32-43.
Jun, W., Chongjun, W., Junyuan, X., & 2014 IEEE 26th International Conference on Tools
with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI). (November 01, 2014). Automated Model
Revision for Coordinated Open Systems. 984-988.
Paques, H., Liu, L., & Pu, C. (July 01, 2016). Adaptation Space: A Design Framework for
Adaptive Web Services. International Journal of Web Services Research, 1, 3, 1-24.
Rich, M., Elia, N., Jones, P., & 2013 21st Mediterranean Conference on Control &
Automation (MED). (June 01, 2013). Design and implementation of an
H<inf>&#x221E;</inf> controller for a quadrotor helicopter. 1189-1198.
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