EasyLearn: Six-Sigma based Projects in Engineering

Today, Engineering is the most sought after career option and the number of engineers passing out each year; is increasing each year. As a part of the degree curriculum, in the final year of degree, the students have to undertake projects. Two in fact: Minor & Major Project. What is expected from the students by their professors as project is their theoretical knowledge and skills to be seen in the projects. Of course, innovation is their utmost desire, but, most innovations are accidents, isn’t it? And innovation is not the only idea which is going to fetch ‘wows’ for your project, but, the application of the project and the result matters a lot too. In this post, I will suggest you some projects which, in terms of their application and result, are highly rated in the industry.

Six Sigma is a very important term in industries today. It is a Quality Improvement technique which takes a business process to a whole new level which the companies can only dream of. Six Sigma based projects are highly rated by companies and you will have an upper hand in the recruitment processes over others because of the term Six Sigma in your Resume. Let us first start with a brief introduction to Six Sigma and then we will talk about Six-Sigma based Projects in Engineering.

Introduction to Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a quality management methodology which uses different theories and tools to improve the yield of exiting process and reducing the time, money and resources put in. It is a statistical technique to represent the deviation from the standard and measure the same. A Six Sigma process produces only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. In simple words, Six Sigma is a Quality improvement process to attack the reasons behind the defects and, thus, provide a full proof solution against any problem.

Application of Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a process which can be applied to almost any business process or even to a non-commercial process. For instance, if there is an electric generator in your locality which is having low efficiency, collect the data of the power generation and fuel consumption for a reasonable duration and you can increase the efficiency by applying Sis-Sigma methodology on it. You are a team leader and your team members are making mistakes in their projects time and again. Collect the error (mistakes) data and apply the sis-sigma operation and see the astonishing results. The effectiveness of Six-Sigma is tried and tested. Companies, today, just love to go the six-sigma way because there is always scope of improvement in any ocmmercial process and with continuous improvement, the Operating cost goes on decreasing and thus, the company can fulfill the desires of customers: ‘Low Price making no compromise with Quality’.

Projects in Six-Sigma

This is the most crucial part of this post: the Project Ideas.

1. Six-Sigma projects, as I said before, can be done both on commercial and non-commercial activities. If you are lucky enough to do your Summer Training in a company like: Hero MotoCorp, Maruti, Honda or any manufacturing company for that matter.
2. Thermal Power Plants are also a very good option as a Project can be done on their Capacity Utilization, Resource Utilization.
3. And, you won’t believe me when I say that you can even choose a non-commercial process if you don’t get an opportunity in a company. You can concentrate on your Hostel Electric Generator, calculate the power generation data and the fuel consumption and go for the target of better fuel efficiency.
4. Doing a project on Industrial accidents is also a very good choice and is a hot topic these days.

These are only a few ideas from the never-ending list of Six-Sigma based Projects you can take and work on. The possibilities are immense and the appreciation you are going to get is immense too. If you have any idea and want to discuss it with us, post it as a comment in the comment box below this post.

EasyLearn: Design Softwares (Mechanical Engineering)

Today, designing is the backbone of any production system. The 3D modelling softwares in the market today (for instance: SolidWorks, Catia, Pro/E, AutoCAD etc) are so advanced that it is now possible to make anything you want. You can stimulate the working of the design too and see, how it goes. One good thing about the available softwares, used in industries, is that they are identical in more than many ways. So, if you learn one, you can operate any with some hands-on that software.

How to learn a Designing Software?

This, in fact, has an obvious answer: Join a Training Institute. But, this is actually not that obvious, though! You learn it today and you don’t practice it tomorrow, don’t go through the capabilities of the software; it will not take long for your training to go in vain. Actually, designing is not a cup of tea. If you have that zeal of learning a designing software, you have that thought process, imaginative power to think about models, then you should go for learning a software. But, if you want to learn a software just for the sake of learning and to elongate your resume, don’t go for it; simple as that! Lots of students ask me which software should he/her go for? This is, in fact, a very good question. Yes, I said at the start that all softwares are nearly the same, but, the user interface is a lot different. The capabilities of few softwares are better than the rest. And this is the reason why industries give preference to a few softwares only. SolidWorks and Pro/Engineering (Pro/E) are the most popular. Both softwares are capable of doing anything for you and are amazingly capable of doing almost anything.

For learning any design software, you need guidance: from a tutor or from a book.

• Sham Tickoo’s is the best book in the market.
• Tutorials are available on YouTube
• Documents related to design are readily available on Scribd
• Practice is really very important. Engineering Design books like: ND Bhatt have a lot of assemblies up for grabs.
• Just clicking here and there in the software is really handy. It tells you the capabilities of the software and the features.
• Help tab in the software is underrated all the time. But, in actuality, it explains all the features offered by the software and the directions regarding its use.

Learning a designing software needs your time, interest and practice. If you have that zeal in you to learn, you will succeed for sure. And believe me, it is the best dimension of Mechanical Engineering course. You will relish the time you spend learning it.