MTI – Material Aspects in Manufacturing
Megan Piccus, Springfield Technical Community College
July 10, 1999
Team Dynamics and its’ counterpart "Composites"
Goal: The goal of this module is to present material science concepts in a participatory/active learning method that allows the student to test theories and concepts in a fun way. An added benefit of this module is that you can begin to explore some management principles/practices that the students will see when they graduate and enter the world of "concurrent engineering."
Objective: The objective of this module is to demonstrate to the student that a composite is a "material" combined together to enhance the strengths of the individual components and eliminating (or reducing) the effect of the weaknesses of the components. The creation of the composite can be described as synergistic. (i.e. "the whole is greater than the individual parts.) Organizational behavior studies show that the same principle follows with team dynamics.
After this module, the student will:
- Be able to define what a composite material is in lay terms.
- Be better prepared to enter the work environment that is increasing relying on team activities and problem solving abilities.
- Appreciate the effect of working as a team can yield superior results to an individuals effort.
Procedure:
- Begin this module by discussing the role that composites play in the manufacturing world, particularly in the aerospace and sporting goods industries. Highlight the fact that composites really have only been on the scene for the last 30 years. Lead the discussion towards the changes in the work force that have occurred during the same timeframe; "Throw it over the wall" mentality vs. teamwork and concurrent engineering.
- The second step is to pass out to the individual students a commercially purchased survival exercise (I have used Human Synergistics out of _________________. They have several packages. The one that I use is the Helicopter crash in the Cascade Mountains. They have other story lines also.) Each student is a passenger on a helicopter flight in a blizzard in the Cascade Mountains. The helicopter crashes, the pilot dies, and you have no idea where you are. The student has to rank items in the helicopter in order of priority to survival. (This part can be done prior to the class session on the students’ own time in order to save time)
- The third step is to then arrange the class into teams of 5-7 people. After a discussion on problem solving techniques, you ask the team to again rank the items in order of priority to survival.
- You then compare each teams ranking to the experts. Almost always the team does better than the individual. You get to squeeze in some math here also for the math phobic…percent improvement, deviation from team average and individual, # of individuals above team average, # below, etc.
- Discuss how this exercise can be related to composites.
- I would probably follow up with one or two of the experiments that we did in the institute…probably the cantilever beam test and the 3 point bending test to again demonstrate the synergistic effect of composites.