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LANCASTER university won support from the SERC as a site for an Engineering
Design Centre with a proposal to concentrate on mechatronics. This is the
emerging discipline that combines electronics and mechanical engineering
and information technology.

Lancaster’s EDC has four main aims. It wants to develop software that
will guide novice engineers through the process of drawing up preliminary
designs; that will help experienced engineers to cost the consequences of
making particular design decisions; and that will enable these engineers
to arrange components efficiently. The fourth goal is to try to discover
‘why engineers don’t get to the best ideas first time’, says Michael French,
professor of engineering design and the centre’s director-designate. It
aims to promote creativity by encouraging engineers to reconsider the principles
underlying their design work.

At Cambridge, researchers in the EDC will concentrate on mechanical
systems instead of electrical or electronic ones, says Ken Wallace, director-designate
of the centre. They will try to devise ways of modelling the functions and
properties of a component on computer. At present, only the shape of a component
can be modelled easily. ‘We must look to what will be happening in 20 to
50 years’ time,’ he says. ‘Designers in the future will be supported by
heavily interactive systems.’

The Cambridge researchers will evaluate their new design methods in
three test beds, which have already been established in the university’s
engineering department. These are for printing machinery, aircraft engines
and road vehicle suspensions.

Newcastle’s EDC aims to improve the design of made-to-order, or MTO,
products, such as power stations, ships, offshore platforms and petrochemical
plants. Unlike cars (on a production line) that are designed to meet a range
of uses, nearly every component of an MTO product must conform to a specific
requirement.

According to Paul Braiden, professor of manufacturing engineering, the
EDC will complement the work of the university’s Design Unit, which was
set up in the early 1970s. In contrast, while the unit responds to particular
requests for help from industry, the centre will try to solve industry’s
long-term problems. ‘We can now span the whole range,’ says Braiden.

At City University in London, the EDC has six major research areas.
It will consider how to incorporate the needs of the consumer from the moment
an idea surfaces and how to assess a product’s weaknesses before it goes
on sale. It will also investigate the factors that influence a product’s
cost. According to Alan Jebb, the centre’s director-designate, 90 per cent
of a product’s cost are committed in the first 10 per cent of its development
period. ‘Designers want to make the right decisions,’ he says.

The London EDC will also look at the impact of new materials and technologies,
and the risks involved in applying the latest developments. It will also
use statistical analysis to provide designers with methods of assessing
the reliability of electronic circuits and it will devise methods of persuading
managements of the need to take quality and engineering design seriously.