A Simplified Documentation Control System For Use With A Capstone Senior Design Program

Modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have grown from document control systems pioneered, developed and perfected by engineering organizations over the past 100 years. The idea of having controlled and correct information available at the fingertips of any employee has revolutionized the entire business world, and contributed to the vast productivity increases seen in the workplace in recent decades. As a part of a comprehensive capstone engineering experience, exposure to documentation control is used to prepare graduating seniors for typical of duties they will encounter in the modern workplace, but that are not covered in traditional engineering curricula. This work describes a basic documentation control system used in a multidisciplinary program to train students in information control processes and procedures that are expected of practicing engineers. Work in an organization with global reach increases the importance of real time document and information control and sensitivity to the requirements of a modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system should position the students exiting the program to be more competitive in the workplace. This work describes a simple but effective system of required documentation, naming conventions, release structure and revision controls that enable student teams to track documentation changes during the life of their capstone project, along with the rationale for any implemented changes. Additionally, the students learn to keep secure, controlled document archives and to standardize document production for presentation to instructors, other faculty, external mentors and other program stakeholders. This program has been designed for migration to an open source ERP system, and the early stages of that migration will also be discussed. Document Control Rationale The earliest known examples that could be labeled as engineering drawings date from the time of the ancient Egyptians, from about 1500 B.C. 1 . The simple drawing of a shaduf shown in Ref. [1], with a human operator for scale, could be used to reproduce this simple machine for lifting irrigation water. Euclid formalized geometry around the year 320 B.C., in a way that allowed for the use of drawings as analytical tools. 2 As engineering entered the Renaissance, investigators who possessed artistic skill began laying the ground work for formalized engineering documentation by drawing not just P ge 1.89.2 items used for simple agriculture, manufacturing, architectural and building trades, but drawing complex working devices with some faithful scale as adjunct tools for calculations. The items created by “court engineers” were largely military in nature. 3 In the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, Gaspard Monge, a French military engineer, pioneered the development of descriptive geometry. 4 Monge’s teachings were brought to the United States in 1807 via the Military academy in West Point, New York. Needs of the industrial revolution prompted designers and engineers to adopt individual methods of tracking changes in documentation throughout the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In the early 20 th century, the largest user of manufactured goods in the country, the United States Armed Forces, began to consider standards for engineering documentation and specifications. A large body of Military specifications and drawings were generated, for products as diverse as tooth paste to capacitors 5 . These documents were maintained by the federal government, with revision control processes and archiving defined ultimately by DoD-STD-100. Several Engineering societies had already published drawing standards, ASME, ANSI and IEEE to name a few. Ultimately the government began to use specifications and drawing practices defined by practitioners and unified as a national standard. Drawing and drafting practices were unified under the ANSI/ASME Y14.100 series of documents. As documentation systems move to all electronic formats, such as the one used by Northrop-Grumman to design the B-2 Spirit bomber, and the common practice in the automotive industry for CAD models of complex sheet metal parts to be the “Master” for inspection, standards are being issued, such as ANSI Y14.41, to assure that documentation remains accessible and useful to future engineering practitioners. Modern Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Business systems have developed from engineering document control practices and systems design methodology 6 . Business Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems such as SAP 7 and Al Fresco 8 are two examples of this type of activity, scaled for large, international organizations with proprietary code and support to open source code and flexible support options. Off shoring of some engineering functions is a reality in the modern workplace. This distribution of engineering effort requires a system of document maintenance that is accessible from anywhere in the world, at any time of day. Students exposed to documentation control theory and practice as undergraduates should have an advantage in the modern workplace where distributed engineering functions and document generation and use predominate.