EE3001

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

EE3001 Technology Assessment

Introduction
The purpose of this module is to introduce students to the electronic product creation process.
A key objective is to demonstrate to students the relationship among business goals,
application/products, engineering practices and technologies. Students will attend introductory
lectures on key issues relating to Technology Assessment. Subsequently students will be
divided into groups, with each group executing a project to reinforce the concepts taught. No
actual engineering developmental work is conducted in these projects. Students will also be
exposed to issues on engineering professionalism, safety and ethics in each topic of discussion
throughout the project. The deliverables are feasibility reports on the topic of study and are
focused on the following aspects:

a. The formulation of a conceptual marketable electronic product or service. The product

concerned may include high volume consumer products/services or specialized
industrial equipment or processes. Definition of a user feature set will be made and if
appropriate industrial design concept and packaging will be considered.
b. Development feasibility. No actual engineering work is performed but students have to
show clearly the approaches and technologies needed to realize the final product.
Consideration will also include regulatory requirements such as EMI, ESD, etc.
c. To consider costing and realistic pricing policy to realize market potential.
d. To consider the manufacturability aspects of any developed engineering prototype.
e. Preliminary study on market feasibility of the product. This will include market size,
acceptance, share, etc.
f. To show realistic planning and scheduling for the project execution. This will also
include a budgetary financial planning.
g. Consider the issues on engineering professionalism, safety and ethics.

Period of Projects
4 MC which work out to approximately 10 hours per week over one semester.

Scope of Projects
The project will expose the students to the various stages of product development. It will
include product conceptualization, market feasibility studies, technical feasibility studies, and
financial planning.
The investigations done in the project will be based on actual facts and should be
implement-able. Science fiction types involving only “thought process” are excluded. It will
have to be substantial and involves a complete review of the state of the art achieved currently.
Both engineering application of technology and project management and planning will be
emphasized. The proportion of emphasis is as follows.
Application of technology 70%
Project management 30%

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As a guide, each project should preferably include the following:

a) A description of the conceptualized product or service to be developed.
b) An assessment of the market potential of the product or service.
c) Proper budget, plans, and schedule for the development phase of the project.
d) State of the art review and drawing of specifications. Specifications include
• specification on user requirements
• specification on system requirements
• design specifications
e) Block diagram design for the technical aspect. Each block should contain complete and
detailed functionality description. However component level design is not required.

Guidelines for Types of Projects

For the purpose of injecting realism into the projects, supervisor will define the assumptions
under which the students will work. The setting can be that of a division within a large
multi-national corporation (MNC), a small to medium size enterprise (SME) or even a startup
company. The following should be provided.

1. The role identity the students have to adopt. Eg: Part of Hewlett Packard Inc –
Laserjet Division
2. Core competency of group. Eg: printing solutions
3. Support available to the group
4. Corporate objectives
5. Group objectives
6. Technology areas to explore

The product under consideration can be but need not necessary be one that is new and not
available in the market place. It can be the application of new (or different) technologies to an
existing product line. An example is DVD recording instead of tape based recording.
Alternatively it can be the extension of a product feature. An example could be a shift from
kilo-pixel camcorder to mega-pixel camcorder.

Factors to consider in executing Projects

The following are factors that should be considered by students in executing the project. The
supervisor may want to supervise each group along the guidelines.

Phase 1: Conceptualization of new or extension products.

Some factors to consider in evaluating the merits of each proposal are as follows.

„ Corporate and divisional objectives

„ Business / commercial objectives
„ Core competencies
„ Product landscape
„ Competitor’s position
„ Market / channel access
„ Technology access
„ Manufacturing access
„ Regulatory, safety, environmental, ethics or legal position

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The initial brain storming sessions should lead to some preliminary proposal in which the team
would present formally to the supervisor at around Week 4 or 5 to obtain the supervisor’s
preliminary approval. Upon the supervisor’s approval, the project moves into the second
phase.

Phase 2: Domain Assessment

In the second phase, the team is divided into smaller group with each group looking at different
aspects. There should be three aspects; market, technical and financial assessments. The
factors to consider in each assessment are as follows.

„ Market assessment
„ Form of offerings
„ Selling approaches
„ Availability or development of channels
„ Market size, share, etc
„ Sell-through estimation
„ Product specification, requirement and pricing to support sell-through
estimation
„ Technical assessment
„ Translating product specification and requirement to technical
specification, for example is user friendly = one button operation?
„ Product architecture. It is important to consider the following.
„ Manufacturability?
„ Field support?
„ Regulatory and legal requirements
„ Quality assurance
„ Embodiment
„ Cost estimation
„ Financial assessment
„ Development budgeting
„ Production budgeting
„ Marketing budgeting

Each team is responsible for project management and schedule. Supervisor should insist on a
proper schedule and management checkpoints. Good teams should provide risk analysis along
each path of the project.

The will be a formal interim one-hour presentation to the supervisor in Week 10. In this
presentation, the supervisor will assess the details of each area, market, technical and finance.

The final presentation in Week 13 to the examiners will not be attended by the supervisor.

Administration (students)
Students will be divided into teams of 8. More than one team may be assigned to each project
synopsis. The scope of the project will be divided among the students. The results will be
derived as a team effort with each member contributing a portion. Only one report is to be
submitted by the team. Similarly oral presentation will be team based with each member
presenting one portion of the project.

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Administration (staff)
The staff members involve in each project are as follows.
a) Technical Supervisor(s) from ECE department
b) Project Examiners from ECE department

Technical Supervisor(s)
Each group of 8 students to be supervised by a staff member.
Their duties are as follows:
1. To oversee the students’ progress and ensure that the group is moving in the right direction.
Supervisors will follow the guideline given above closely
2. To provide the specific technical advice relating to the technologies used or investigated in
the project.
3. To provide general advice relating to project management and planning to facilitate the
students to do the project.
4. To play the role of management to the students.
5. To assess the overall performance of the groups throughout the project.
6. Each team will meet up with the supervisor at least once a week for about one and a half
hour.

Project Examination
Supervisor of each group would evaluate the group on a continuous basis; primarily on the one
and a half hour contact made every week. The supervisor will also read the final report of the
group and award marks.
Workshops of three-hour will be organized for the purpose of examining the teams externally.
About 5 to 6 teams will be assigned to each workshop. A panel of examiners will preside over
each workshop. Examiners will not be given reports of the teams. However handouts may be
given by the teams during the workshop. During the workshop, each team will be given exactly
30 minutes to present their findings. The team is free to decide on the utilization of the 30
minutes. It can either use the time solely for presentation in which there would be no time left
for clarification by examiners. The examiners would be left to draw his/her conclusions.
Alternatively the team may assign some time for questions and answers. For successful
conduct of each workshop, the following are to be observed.
1. Students are given full control of their 30 minutes. Examiners MUST NOT
interrupt proceeding if the students indicate that no question is to be asked until the
conclusion of the presentation.
2. Examiner must note that this is NOT a teaching workshop, and therefore they
should only clarify their doubts and not enter into a debate with the team or enter
into a long narrative on how things should be done otherwise. As a rough guide,
posing of each question should take no more than 20 seconds. Examiners are
however free to make separate appointments with the teams to further discuss the
project. However the result of such discussions would not be considered in the
grading process.
3. Examiners evaluate performance on team basis, not individuals. Evaluation of
individual is the job of the supervisor. Grades are given based on how well the
concept is conceived and how well each of the three assessments is done.
Examiners should follow the guidelines given above. Examiners are required to

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write a short paragraph on the merits and reservations they had on each assessment
to justify their grade.
4. Note that it is not necessary for each member of the team to speak in the
presentation. The team is free to send its best speaker as their representatives, if it so
desires. However all team members should be present at the workshop. Grade given
is based on how clearly the concepts of the team’s project are delivered. Language
capability should be ignored, unless it directly impacts the clarity of the delivery.

Execution of Project

Week 1
8 hours worth of lectures on project management and tools. The lectures are to include the
following

Methods for user requirement determination and market survey

The Production Creation Process
Computer tools
Case studies
Technical communication

Week 2 to 12
Project proper. On the 4th and 10th week, students will have to make a formal presentation to
their supervisors (playing the role management. Each time 4 students will be responsible for
the presentation.
Students will have to submit the final report on the 12th week. Only one group report needs to
be submitted. Students will have to make a declaration on the parts of the reports each person is
responsible for.

Evaluation Criteria
a) Execution of project (60% of total marks)
(For supervisors: 50% to come from group effort and 50% to come from individual
achievement)
(For examiners: 100% to come from group effort)

b) Report writing (20% of total marks)

(50% to come from group effort and 50% to come from individual achievement)
(A declaration form by the group on the parts each individual is responsible will be
submitted together with the report)

c) Presentation (20% of total marks)

(For supervisors: 50% to come from group effort and 50% to come from individual
achievement)
(For examiners: 100% to come from group effort)

Peer Appraisal: Each student will be asked to rank the other students (except himself /
herself) from 1 to n (n=7 for group of 8) on a few criteria. A form is available for this purpose.

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This ranking exercise will be helpful to the supervisor in the awarding of marks for the
individual achievement part of the grade.

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EE3001 Peer Appraisal Form

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
You are to rank your team members according to the following criteria. DO NOT RANK YOURSELF. Each
member of the team is to be ranked from 1-st to 7-th on each of the criteria; the best to be ranked 1-st and the worst
to be ranked 7-th. NO TWO OR MORE MEMBERS are to be given the same ranking. This should be handed
individually to your supervisor.

Your Name:_____________________________________

Names of team
members

Criteria
Provides innovative and/or good ideas

Willing to volunteer for tasks

Reliable in getting assigned tasks done

Willing to help out team members

Appropriate person as leader of team

Overall contribution to the project

Comments on performance of the team:

In what areas can the team performs better?

In what areas can you perform better?

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EE3001 Examination Score Sheet

Group Number : ___________________________________________

Supervisor* : ___________________________________________

Team Score (This contributed 50% of each student's total score)

Execution of Project Report writing Presentation
(100%) (100%) (100%)
Weighting=0.6 Weighting=0.2 Weighting=0.2

Individual Score (This contributed 50% of each student's total score)

Criteria Execution Report writing Presentation

(100%) (100%) (100%)
Name Weighting=0.6 Weighting=0.2 Weighting=0.2

* delete accordingly

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EE3001 Examination Score Sheet

Group Number : ___________________________________________

Examiner* : ___________________________________________

Factors Score Comments – Justifications is needed for all marks awarded.

100%

Conceptualizatio
n

Market
Assessment

Technical
Assessment

Financial
Assessment

Presentation

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