Introducing R&M and testability into the undergraduate system-design course

In October 1989 Florida Institute of Technology introduced reliability, maintainability, and testability (R/M/T) material into its three-quarter Electrical and Computer Engineering System Design course sequence. This course originally had senior-year students conceive, design, fabricate, test, and demonstrate a working prototype of their proposed projects. This R/M/T material provided an emphasis by introducing the concepts of concurrent engineering. This is accomplished by implementing a more formal system design process which includes team building, communication skills (written and oral), task scheduling and monitoring, and project cost estimating. The first quarter is used to organize the student project teams, and instruct the students on the system design process, and fundamentals of designing for R/M/T. The first quarter concludes with the students submitting their team project proposal. During the second quarter, the teams complete their preliminary and detailed design. This activity is augmented with seminars (lectures) on producibility, quality assurance, fabrication techniques, and testability design concepts. The third quarter is used for the fabrication, test, and demonstration of the team´s prototype. In addition, seminars on statistical process control are provided