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Design for Manufacturing Examples: Real-Life Engineering Case Studies

Key Takeaways:

More than 70% of a part’s cost can be locked in during the early design phase
Adopt a robust DFM process using digital manufacturing simulation tools to address cost, sustainability, and innovative design iterations simultaneously

The Full Article:

Typically, more than 70% of a part’s cost is locked in once its design is finalized. And at that point, manufacturing and sourcing teams have limited options to optimize part costs. That’s why cost modeling is exponentially more effective during the design phase. Product engineers need the ability to identify viable, cost-effective design alternatives while a project is still on the drawing board. This approach empowers design teams to innovate without sacrificing time to market or profit margins.

We explore this topic in greater detail by examining real-life examples to illustrate a key DFM principle in action. This includes why spreadsheets and other tools that rely on historical estimates provide a static, incomplete view of costing data – and how you can overcome this challenge with solutions that link design decisions to cost outcomes. Areas addressed include:

The Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Imperative
Overview of Important Cost Categories
DFM Success Stories: Identifying Cost Inefficiencies
Hidden Material Cost Drivers
DFM Material Conversion Cost Example
Other Methods for Cost-Effective Design for Manufacturability
Learn More About the Power of Digital Manufacturing Insights

1) The Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Imperative

What if engineers had precise, design-level guidance on key cost drivers for their new product designs? And what if they had the insight to see how the cost is being affected by raw materials, conversion (i.e., the cost of turning raw material into a part), routing, and other manufacturability issues?

Having access to this capability would provide design and cost engineers with guidance to revise parts for added cost efficiency during the design phase. aPriori’s Manufacturing Insights Platform offers a solution that enables organizations to achieve this objective.

Unlike traditional spreadsheets, aPriori automatically evaluates the geometry of 3D CAD models whenever they are checked into a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Through this software functionality, engineers gain real-time cost insights for parts and sub-assemblies, improving design and sourcing decisions.

Moreover, aPriori provides teams with a deeper understanding of the complex factors influencing part costs. The software is also equipped with cost and process modeling capabilities , enabling engineers to configure and run various scenarios. As a result, teams can seamlessly compare a part’s material, supplier, regional expenses, and more to make informed decisions.

To understand the impact of advanced manufacturing cost modeling, it’s helpful to consider the factors that contribute to a part’s final cost. Below, we break down a few key categories of part cost. The specifics may vary greatly, but these basic cost categories apply whether the part in question is sheet metal or plastic, cast or machined.

Watch this webinar to learn the best practices and digital tools to build a successful costing team.

2) Overview of Important Cost Categories

Direct + variable costs:.

The powerful interaction between each choice in the direct/variable cost category is significantly important. While engineering decisions may have an impact on period costs in the long run, we will focus on direct costs, as they often have the most substantial impact. The following categories describe the expenses associated with the marginal cost of producing each additional part.

Key Drivers of Material Costs

Material type
Material stock size (standard or non-standard)
Material selection and utilization
Special grain orientations (e.g., tight bends on a part may only allow manufacturing to orient the part in one direction when cutting it on the sheet)

Key Drivers of Overhead and Labor Costs

Cycle time to make the part. Note: more than one machine may be used to make a part.
Number of times that the part must be set up – whether in one machine or multiple machines
Type and size of machine(s) that will be used to make the part
Any secondary production processes such as paint, heat treatment, etc.

Indirect/Period Costs:

These costs matter for overall profitability but aren’t necessarily immediately impacted by marginal production changes. For instance, a factory will have some base level of maintenance costs regardless of the number of parts being made within a given period. These costs must be associated with specific supporting functions and spread across all parts produced.

Key Factory-Related Cost Drivers

Energy costs
Heating and cooling the plant
Cleaning and maintenance
Purchasing, manufacturing, engineering, shipping and receiving, and other supporting business functions

Key Administrative Cost Drivers

General management costs
Sales, marketing, and business development expenditures
Technology support (e.g., IT staff or services)

Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and Non-Recurring Costs:

Examples include initial investments in productive capital such as molds, stamping dies, machining fixtures, weld fixtures, and more.
The cost impact of capital expenditures will vary depending on the complexity of the part, number of cavities, number of parts over the life of the tool, etc.

3) DFM Success Stories: Identifying Cost Inefficiencies

We developed both case studies using aPriori’s digital factory capabilities, which involve simulated production based on modeling a part’s digital twin .

During the design stage, you don’t need the absolute value estimate to be exact; a good, reliable approximation will suffice. For instance, you may determine that 20% of the part cost is material and 65% is conversion cost. While these amounts may vary during final production, they can provide a useful guidepost for prioritizing cost optimization projects. This practice can help you save time by avoiding product design changes that will have minimal impact on cost.

Manufacturing insights can help engineers minimize time-consuming activities and work faster. This automation-driven platform can determine the most efficient manufacturing methodology through near-instant cost estimates for new design alternatives.

Learn more about how design for manufacturing (DFM) has a real impact on new product pipelines.

Material Cost Example One: Truck Sheet Metal Fan Cover Redesign

The following screenshot shows that 88% of the fan cover cost is material. To reduce material costs, you can:

Select an alternative material that is cheaper (but still reflects functional load requirements and tolerances).
Use less material by making the part thinner, adding ribbed forms to strengthen it, or improving material utilization to reduce waste.

The product developer recognized that the material choice was the primary cost driver and reduced the part size without altering the size of the opening or component mating points. The following screenshot displays his final solution.

Note that while labor and overhead costs increased from $0.49 to $0.53, the material cost dropped from $7.51 to $5.63, saving $1.88 – which is a 25% savings. This improvement has paid for itself exponentially because the part is still used in tens of thousands of trucks.

This is a great example of how a reliable cost estimate is useful for prioritizing redesign work. A good cost vector (whether the cost is going up or down, by a little or a lot) is sufficient. For example, if the material cost dropped by only $1.50 instead of $1.88, the price reduction would still warrant a redesign.

Material Cost Example Two: Plastic Seat

A manufacturer produces approximately 200,000 seats annually. The digital manufacturing cost model revealed that material is 67% of the total cost.

The engineer redesigning the seat has two options:

Use lower-cost materials. Note: had the conversion cost been the most expensive, you may have wanted a material that cools faster, thereby decreasing the cycle time and production cost.
Reduce the amount of material without compromising seat integrity.

The engineer tried several alternative designs, including:

She began by reducing the thickness of the plastic from the top edge of the back of the seat down to 2/3 of the way and from the edge of the bottom of the seat to approximately ½ of the way to the middle of the seat. This change decreased the average thickness from 0.18” to 0.15”. It is critical to note that the cost of materials, labor, and overhead was also reduced. That’s because the thinner part cools faster, leading to a double benefit: a reduction in material and manufacturing costs, totaling $0.95 on a $5 component – a nearly 20% reduction.

The second design change made the back hole slightly larger from its original 5”–6” in height. However, because this change only shaved a few cents off the original cost, it was not worth the risk of potential quality issues or increased customer discomfort. The value of having real-time cost feedback “at the speed of design” enables you to catch these false starts far earlier in the process and maintain quality control by adhering to the principles of DFM.

4) Hidden Material Cost Drivers

This approach worked until their factory became overwhelmed and started buying parts or sending them to another internal factory across the country. The parts became much more expensive because they needed to orient the components perpendicular to the bend, which limits the nesting flexibility of the part and requires more material. Simulated production software like aPriori can automatically identify if a bend is too tight and recommend a minimum bend angle.
The organization suspected an unscrupulous bid from a supplier. Still, upon review, it found that the supplier had to buy a special forging or start with the next size-up standard bar to meet the customer’s requirements. Either way, the cost would be disproportionately impacted. A diameter reduction of just a few millimeters fixed the issue, and the final design still had plenty of inertia margin.

5) DFM Material Conversion Cost Example

Let’s now move into conversion costs. Design engineers make choices that affect a large range of conversion costs, such as:

Labor cost is proportional to cycle time. And the skill necessary to run the machine affects the wages of the operator. A 5-axis CNC machinist makes more than a 3-axis mill operator, for example.
Set-up cost includes the number of machines to be set up and the number of times the part needs to be set up. Volume plays a large role in determining the per-product impact of set-up costs.
Direct overhead cost is proportional to cycle time and the type and size of the machine.

An engineer was assigned to reduce the cost for a part like the one below. A quick design review revealed a 40/60 split between material cost and conversion cost. This implies that there may be opportunities to contain costs on both sides of this split without impacting lead times.

The engineer also noted that because this is a relatively low-volume part (300 units per year), it was being purchased as a machined part. While not very complex, the multiple slants on the surfaces were forcing this part to a 5-axis mill (rather than a comparatively cheap 3-axis mill).

The engineer had three choices to reduce costs:

Redesign the part to reduce complexity for production on a cheaper machine
Investigate machining costs further and address those issues in the design
Identify alternative manufacturing processes for the part if they show promise

Using simulated manufacturing to analyze costs, the engineer discovered that the material utilization was only 11%, meaning that nearly 9 lbs. out of every 10 lbs. of material would be wasted. As expected, most of the cost of making the part was in machining, but from roughing operations, not finishing the part. This demonstrated that getting the part to near net shape was costing a lot in both material and manufacturing costs (see the figures below).

This part had been designated as a machined component because of the relatively low volume production of 300 units per year. However, based on this evidence, the engineer decided to investigate sand casting for the part. To see if it would be worth redoing the design and fatigue analysis to turn this into a casting, he created a cost estimate for sand casting the part.

After analyzing the cost difference of approximately $190 per part on 300 parts, which amounted to a potential annual savings of $57,000, the component was redesigned and purchased as a casting, resulting in significant cost savings.

Alternatively, imagine that this part was not a candidate for a casting process due to load and fatigue requirements, as is the part below. The process for reducing costs for the part is similar, except that you need to explore machining costs (some parts may be extruded as well).

Consider how manufacturability issues may be costing you dearly. By evaluating the actual production methods intended for a part, manufacturing insights can identify design features that pose significant challenges. This could involve pinpointing a lack of draft angles, areas with excessive or insufficient thickness, or features that need a side action in plastic injection molding or die casting. For machined parts, issues like sharp corners, obstructed surfaces, or curved surfaces that require ball milling could be highlighted. Addressing these problems early can streamline production and reduce critical costs.

Looking at this part below, we notice a similar ratio of material to conversion cost. And we dig into the features that make it difficult to produce, as casting or extruding it is not an option.

In the interest of time, we will limit ourselves to resolving as many of these L/D ratios as possible. The engineer realizes that the corner radius of those pockets is small, requiring a small tool diameter selection that violates customary L/D ratios and causes slower finishing times. He has the liberty to make those bigger, which won’t change the material consumed. See the figure below for the redesigned part.

Larger corner radii allow for larger diameter selection, which increases the tool’s ability to reach further down without shaking. Cycle time drops, and cost goes down. A 17% cost reduction is certainly worth the effort of the redesign.

6) Other Methods for Cost-Effective Design for Manufacturability

It is possible to affect the size of a machine in manufacturing by considering the design of the part. For example, suppose a part is being produced in China, where labor costs are low, but overhead costs are high due to the use of large, expensive machines. In that case, it may be worth considering features that can influence machine selection.

The die-cast part below has a web in the middle that is not functionally necessary. This web is causing the part to require two-side cores, one on each side. If the web were removed, only one core would be needed, the mold base size would decrease, and the machine size (tonnage) would go down, causing a reduction in tooling and piece part cost with a smaller machine/lower overhead rate. Additionally, you may be able to have more cavities now, which is a big plus if this is a high-volume part.

The number of set-ups can dramatically affect the cost of a low-volume part. A hole that can’t be accessed from an already available set-up direction (aPriori can show you those) can cause an extra set-up.

Too many of these will require a more expensive machine, for example, forcing a move from a 3-axis to a 4-axis or 5-axis. Did you know that if your sheet metal part has an acute angle bend and an obtuse angle bend on the same part, then two bend breaks will have to be set up to make it? This may have minimal cost impact if the part is produced in large volumes, but if this is a low-volume part, it could create serious cost inefficiencies.

7) Learn More About the Power of Digital Manufacturing Insights

DFM is pivotal to identifying cost savings from the initial product design through material selection and manufacturing. By integrating aPriori’s advanced manufacturing insights, product engineers gain a deeper understanding of how seemingly small variables can significantly impact cost and other factors.

This approach provides product design and cost engineers with clear visibility and automated guidance to make informed decisions that enhance both product quality and profitability. The adoption of DFM best practices, supported by aPriori’s insights, can ensure that products are designed for performance, profitability, sustainability, and market success.

This post was originally published on Aug. 12, 2020, and updated on April 18, 2024.

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About the Author

The pages of engineering history are full of examples of design flaws that escaped detection in the design phase only to reveal themselves once the device was in actual use. Although many devices are plagued by minor design flaws from time to time, a few failure cases have become notorious because they affected many people, caused great property damage, or led to sweeping changes in engineering practice. In this section, we review several design failures from the annals of engineering lore. Each event involved the loss of human life or major destruction of property, and each was caused by an engineering design failure. The mistakes were made by engineers who did the best they could, but had little prior experience or had major lapses in engineering judgement. After each incident, similar disasters were averted, because engineers were able to study the causes of the problems and establish new or revised engineering standards and guidelines. Studying these classic failures and the mistakes of the engineers who caused them will help you to avoid making similar mistakes in your own work.

The failure examples to follow all had dire consequences. Each occurred once the product was in use, long after the initial design, test, and evaluation phases. It's always better for problems to show up before the product has gone to market. Design problems can be corrected easily during testing, burn-in, and system evaluation. If a design flaw shows up in a product or system that has already been delivered for use, the consequences are far more serious. As you read the examples of this section, you might conclude that the causes of these failures in the field should have been obvious, and that failure to avoid them was the result of some engineer's carelessness. Indeed, it's relatively easy to play “Monday-morning quarterback” and analyze the cause of a failure after it has occurred. But as any experienced engineer will tell you, spotting a hidden flaw during the test phase is not always easy when a device or system is complex and has many parts or subsystems that interact in complicated ways. Even simple devices can be prone to hidden design flaws that elude the test and evaluation stages. Indeed, one of the marks of a good engineer is the ability to ferret out flaws and errors before the product finds its way to the end user. You can help to strengthen your abilities with the important intuitive skill of flaw detection by becoming familiar with the classic failure incidents discussed in this section. If you are interested in learning more details about any of the case studies, you might consult one of the references listed at the end of the chapter.

1 Case 1: Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, built across Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington in 1940, was the longest suspension bridge of its day. The design engineers copied the structure of smaller, existing suspension bridges and simply built a longer one. As had been done with countless shorter spans, support trusses deep in the structure of the bridge's framework were omitted to make it more graceful and visually appealing. No calculations were done to prove the structural integrity of a longer bridge lacking internal support trusses. Because the tried-and-true design methods used on shorter spans had been well tested, the engineers assumed that these design methods would work on longer spans. On November 7, 1940, during a particularly windy day, the bridge started to undulate and twist, entering into the magnificent torsional motion shown in Figure 3 . After several hours, the bridge crumbled as if it were made from dry clay; not a piece remained between the two main center spans.

What went wrong? The engineers responsible for building the bridge had relied on calculations made for smaller bridges, even though the assumptions behind those calculations did not apply to the longer span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Had the engineers heeded some basic scientific intuition, they would have realized that three-dimensional structures cannot be directly scaled upward without limits.

2 Case 2: Hartford Civic Center

The Hartford Civic Center was the first of its kind. At the time of its construction in the mid 1970s, no similar building had been built before. Its roof was made from a space frame structure of interconnected rods and ball sockets, much like a child's construction toy. Hundreds of rods were interconnected in a visually appealing geodesic pattern like the one shown in Figure 4 . Instead of performing detailed hand calculations, the design engineers relied on the latest computer models to compute the loading on each individual member of the roof structure. Recall that computers in those days were much more primitive than those we enjoy today. The PC had not yet been invented, and all work was performed on slow large-mainframe computers.

On January 18, 1978, just a few hours after the center had been filled to capacity with thousands of people watching a basketball game, the roof collapsed under a heavy snow load, demolishing the building. Miraculously, no one was hurt in the collapse.

Why did the collapse occur? Some attribute the failure to the engineers who designed the civic center and chose not to rely on their basic judgement and intuition gleaned from years of construction practice. Instead, they relied on computer models of their new space frame design. These computer models had been written by programmers, not structural engineers, during the days when computer modeling was in its infancy. The programmers based their code algorithms on structural formulas from textbooks. Not one of the programmers had ever actually built a roof truss. All failed to include basic derating factors at the structural joints to account for the slight changes in layout (e.g., minor variations in angles, lengths, and torsion) that occur when a complex structure is actually built. The design engineers trusted the output of computer models that never had been fully tested on actual construction. Under normal roof load, many ball-and-socket joints were stressed beyond their calculated limits. The addition of a heavy snow load to the roof load proved too much for the structure to bear.

3 Case 3: Space Shuttle Challenger

In using O-rings to seal adjacent cylindrical surfaces, such as those depicted in Figure 6 , the engineers had relied on a standard design technique for rockets. The Challenger's booster rockets, however, were much larger than any on which O-rings had been used before. This factor, combined with the unusually cold temperature, brought the seal to its limit, and it failed.

There was, however, another dimension to the failure. Why had the booster been built in multiple sections, requiring O-rings in the first place? The answer is complex, but the cause was largely attributable to one factor: The decision to build a multisection booster was, in part, political . Had engineering common sense been the sole factor, the boosters would have been built in one piece without O-rings. Joints are notoriously weak spots, and a solid body is almost always stronger than a comparable one assembled from sections. The manufacturing technology existed to build large, one-piece rockets of appropriate size. But a senator from Utah lobbied heavily to have the contract for constructing the booster rockets awarded to a company in his state. It was not physically possible to transport a large, one-piece booster rocket all the way from Utah to Florida over existing rail lines. Trucks were too small, and no ships were available that could sail to land-locked Utah, which lies in the middle of the United States. The decision by NASA to award the contract to the Utah company resulted in a multisection, O-ring-sealed booster rocket whose smaller pieces would easily be shipped by rail or truck.

Some say the catastrophe resulted from a lack of ethics on the part of the design engineers who suspected the O-ring design of having potential problems. Some say it was the fault of NASA for succumbing to political pressure from Congress, its ultimate funding source. Others say it was just an unusual convergence of circumstances, since neither the Utah senator nor the design engineers knowingly advocated for a substandard product. The sectioned booster had worked flawlessly on many previous shuttle flights that had not been launched in subfreezing temperatures. Still, others say that by putting more weight on a political element of the project, rather than on pure engineering concerns, the engineers were compromised into a less-than-desirable design concept that had never before been attempted on something so large.

4 Case 4: Kansas City Hyatt

If you've ever been inside a Hyatt hotel, you know that their internal architectures are very unique. The typical Hyatt hotel has cantilevered floors that form an inner trapezoidal atrium, and the walkways and halls are open, inviting structures. There's nothing quite like the inside of a Hyatt. In the case of the Kansas City Hyatt, first opened in 1981, the design included a two-layer, open-air walkway that spanned the entire lobby in midair, from one balcony to another. During a party that took place not long after the hotel opened, the walkway was filled with people dancing in time to the music. The weight and rhythm of the load of people, perhaps in resonance with the walkway, caused it to collapse suddenly. Over one hundred people died, and the event will be remembered forever in the history of hotel management. Although the hotel eventually reopened, to this day the walkway has never been rebuilt.

The collapse of the Hyatt walkway is a classic example of failure due to lack of construction experience. In this case, however, the error originated during the design phase, not the construction phase. In order to explain how the walkway collapsed, consider the sketch of the skeletal frame of the walkway, as specified by the design engineer, shown here in Figure 7 .

Each box beam was to be held up by a separate nut threaded onto a suspended steel rod. The rated load for each nut-to-beam joint was intended to be above the maximum weight encountered during the time of the accident. What's wrong with this picture? The problem is that the structure as specified was not a realistic structure to build. The design called for the walkway's two decks to be hung from the ceiling by a single rod at each support point. The rods were made from smooth steel having no threads. Threading reduces the diameter of a rod, so it's impossible to get a nut to the middle of a rod unless the rod is threaded for at least half its length. In order to construct the walkway as specified, each rod would have to be threaded along about 20 feet of its length, and numerous rods were needed for the long span of the walkway. Even with an electric threading machine, it would have taken days to thread all the needed rods. The contractor who actually built the walkway proposed a modification to the construction so that only the very ends of the rods would have to be threaded. The modification is illustrated in Figure 8 .

The problem with this modification is that the nut (A) at the lower end of the upper rod now had to support the weight of both walkways. A good analogy would be two mountain climbers hanging onto a rope. If both grabbed the rope simultaneously, but independently, the rope could hold their weight. If the lower climber grabbed the ankles of the upper climber instead of the rope, however, the upper climber's hands would have to hold the weight of two climbers. Under the full, or maybe excessive, load conditions of that day, the weight on nut (A) of the Hyatt walkway was just too much, and the joint gave way. Once the joint on one rod failed, the complete collapse of the rest of the joints and the entire walkway quickly followed.

Some attributed the fatal flaw to the senior design engineer who specified single rods requiring 20 feet of threading. Others blamed it on the junior engineer, who signed off on the modifications presented by the construction crew at the construction site, and the senior engineer, who should have communicated to the junior engineer the critical nature of the rod structure as specified. Perhaps both engineers lacked seasoning—the process of getting their hands dirty on real construction problems as a way of gaining a feeling for how things are made in the real world.

Regardless of who was at fault, the design also left little room for safety margins . It's common practice in structural design to leave at least a factor-of-two safety margin between the calculated maximum load and the expected maximum load on a structure. The safety margin allows for inaccuracies in load calculations due to approximation, random variations in material strengths, and small errors in fabrication. Had the walkway included a safety margin of a factor of two or more, the doubly stressed joint on the walkway might not have collapsed, even given its modified construction. The design engineers specified a walkway structure that was possible, but not practical, to build. The construction supervisor, unaware of the structural implications, but wishing to see the job to completion, ordered a small, seemingly innocent, but ultimately fatal, change in the construction method. Had but one of the design engineers ever spent time working on a construction site, this shortcoming might have been discovered. Errors such as the one that occurred at the Kansas City Hyatt can be prevented by including workers from all phases of construction in the design process, ensuring adequate communication between all levels of employees, and adding far more than minimal safety margins where public safety is at risk.

5 Case 5: Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island was a large nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania (see Figure 9 ). It was the sight of the worst nuclear accident in the United States and nearly comparable to the total meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Fortunately, the incident at Three Mile Island resulted in only a near miss at a meltdown, but it also led to the shutting down and trashing of a billion-dollar electric power plant and significant loss of electrical generation capacity on the power grid in the eastern United States.

On the day of the accident, a pressure buildup occurred inside the reactor vessel. It was normal procedure to open a relief valve in such situations to reduce the pressure to safe levels. The valve in question was held closed by a spring and was opened by applying voltage to an electromagnetic actuator. The designer of the electrical control system had made one critical mistake. As suggested by the schematic diagram shown in Figure 10 , indicator lights in the control room lit up when power was applied to or removed from the valve actuator coil, but the control panel gave no indication about the actual position of the valve. After a pressure-relief operation, the valve at Three Mile Island became stuck in the open position. Although the actuation voltage had been turned off and lights in the control room indicated the valve to be closed, it was actually stuck open. The mechanical spring responsible for closing the valve did not have enough force to overcome the sticking force. While the operators, believing the valve to be closed, tried to diagnose the problem, coolant leaked from the vessel for almost two hours. Had the operators known that the valve was open, they could have closed it manually or taken other corrective measures. In the panic that followed, however, the operators continually believed their control-panel indicator lights and thought that the valve was closed. Eventually the problem was contained, but not before a rupture nearly occurred in the vessel. Such an event would have resulted in a complete core meltdown and spewed radioactive gas into the atmosphere. Even so, damage to the reactor core was so severe that the plant was permanently shut down. It has never reopened.

The valve actuation system at Three Mile Island was designed with a poor human-machine interface. The ultimate test of such a system, of course, would be during an emergency when the need for absolutely accurate information would be critical. The operators assumed that the information they were receiving was accurate, while in reality it was not. The power plant's control panel provided the key information by inference, rather than by direct confirmation. A better design would have been one that included an independent sensor that unambiguously verified the true position of the valve, as suggested by the diagram of Figure 11 .

6 Case 6: USS Vincennes

The Vincennes was a U.S. missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. On July 3, 1988, while patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes received two IFF (Identification: Friend or Foe) signals on its Aegis air-defense system. Aegis was the Navy's complex, billion-dollar, state-of-the-art information-processing system that displayed more information than any one operator could possibly hope to digest. Information saturation was commonplace among operators of the Aegis system. The Vincennes had received two IFF signals, one for a civilian plane and the other for a military plane. Under the pressure of anticipating a possible attack, the overstimulated operator misread the cluttered radar display and concluded that only one airplane was approaching the Vincennes. Repeated attempts to reach the nonexistent warplane by radio failed. The captain concluded that his ship was under attack and made the split-second decision to have the civilian airplane shot down. Two hundred ninety civilians died needlessly.

What caused this catastrophic outcome? Was it bad military judgment? Was it an operating error? Were the engineers who designed the system at fault? The Navy officially attributed the accident to “operator error” by an enlisted sailor, but in some circles the blame was placed on the engineers who had designed the system. Under the stress of possible attack and deluged with information, the operator simply could not cope with an ill-conceived human-machine interface designed by engineers. Critical information, being needed most during crisis situations, should have been uncluttered and easy to interpret. The complex display of the Aegis system was an example of something that was designed just because it was technically possible. It resulted in a human-machine interface that became a weak link in the system.

7 Case 7: Hubble Telescope

The Hubble is an orbiting telescope that was put into space at a cost of over a billion dollars. Unaffected by the distortion experienced by ground-based telescopes due to atmospheric turbulence, the Hubble has provided spectacular photos of space and has made possible numerous astronomical discoveries. Yet the Hubble telescope did not escape design flaws. Of the many problems that plagued the Hubble during its first few years, the most famous was its improperly fabricated mirrors. They were distorted and had to be corrected by the installation of an adaptive optic mirror that compensated for aberrations. The repairs were carried out by a NASA Space Shuttle crew. Although this particular flaw is the one most often associated with the Hubble, it was attributed to sloppy mirror fabrication rather than to a design error. Another, less-well-known design error more closely illustrates the lessons of this chapter. The Hubble's solar panels were deployed in the environment of space, where they were subjected to alternate heating and cooling as the telescope moved in and out of the earth's shadow. The resulting expansion and contraction cycles caused the solar panels to flap like the wings of a bird. Attempts to compensate for the unexpected motion by the spacecraft's computer-controlled stabilizing program led to a positive feedback effect which only made the problem worse. Had the design engineers anticipated the environment in which the telescope was to be operated, they could have compensated for the heating and cooling cycles and avoided the problem. This example illustrates that it's difficult to anticipate all the conditions under which a device or system may be operated. Nevertheless, extremes in operating environment often are responsible for engineering failures. Engineers must compensate for this problem by testing and retesting devices under different temperatures, load conditions, operating environments, and weather conditions. Whenever possible (though obviously not possible in the case of the Hubble), a system should be developed and tested in as many different environmental conditions as possible if a chance exists that those conditions will be encountered in the field.

8 Case 8: De Haviland Comet

The De Haviland Comet was the first commercial passenger jet aircraft. A British design, the Comet enjoyed many months of trouble-free flying in the 1950s until several went down in unexplained crashes. Investigations of the wreckages suggested that the fuselages of these planes had ripped apart in midflight. For years, the engineers assigned the task of determining the cause of the crashes were baffled. What, short of an explosion, could have caused the fuselage of an aircraft to blow apart in flight? No evidence of sabotage was found at any of the wreckage sites. After some time, the cause of the crashes was discovered. No one had foreseen the effects of the numerous pressurization and depressurization cycles that were an inevitable consequence of takeoffs and landings. Before jet aircraft, lower altitude airplanes were not routinely operated under pressure. Higher altitude jet travel brought with it the need to pressurize the cabin. In the case of the Comet, the locations of the rivets holding in the windows developed fatigue cracks, which, after many pressurization and depressurization cycles, grew into large, full-blown cracks in the fuselage. This mode of failure is depicted in Figure 12 .

Had the design engineers thought about the environment under which the finished product would be used, the problem could have been avoided. Content instead with laboratory stress tests that did not mimic the actual pressurization and depressurization cycles, the engineers were lulled into a false sense of security about the soundness of their design. This example of failure again underscores an important engineering lesson: Always test a design under the most realistic conditions possible. Always assume that environmental conditions will affect performance and reliability.

Case Studies That Define Mechanical Engineering Challenges

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering is key in creating and perfecting the machines and systems we rely on every day. To truly grasp its complex challenges, it’s useful to look at detailed case studies.

These studies not only show how engineering works but also highlight why keeping people safe, coming up with new ideas, and making ethical choices matter so much.

Let’s explore some major events that tested mechanical engineering. We’ll look at the fix of the Hubble Space Telescope, how Mars Rovers were made to move on another planet, why the Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell apart, the nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, and the massive oil spill from Deepwater Horizon.

Each story breaks down how mechanical engineering played a role and what we can take away from these incidents to prevent future mistakes and guide new breakthroughs in the field.

The Hubble Space Telescope Repair

Mechanical engineers faced tough problems when fixing the Hubble Space Telescope. To tackle these, they combined deep knowledge with creative thinking. They carefully checked the telescope’s parts to find what was broken.

Then, they came up with special tools and steps for the astronauts to fix the telescope in space, where conditions are very difficult. They used a method called finite element analysis to make sure the telescope would be strong enough after the repairs, and they made sure that new parts could be swapped in easily.

Their detailed planning and work didn’t just get Hubble working again; it also made sure the telescope could keep working for a longer time. This shows how important mechanical engineering is in solving tough problems with machinery in space.

Mars Rover Mobility Dilemmas

Building Mars rovers is a tough job for mechanical engineers. They have to make sure these rovers can move smoothly over Mars, which has a very rough surface with lots of rocks, sand, and big hills. Engineers work with advanced robot technology, new types of materials, and knowledge about other planets to solve these problems.

They test their designs over and over to see how the rover parts will handle the ground on Mars. The parts have to be really strong and not wear out quickly, even when they hit unexpected bumps.

Also, the rovers need smart computer systems that can figure out the lay of the land by themselves and change their path to avoid getting stuck or broken. This is super important because if something goes wrong with the rover, it could mess up the whole mission to Mars.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse is a key example for mechanical engineers of why it’s essential to consider how wind affects bridges. When the bridge fell apart in 1940, it showed that suspension bridges can swing and twist dangerously in the wind.

The bridge’s narrow shape, the solid pieces it was made of, and not enough side support were big reasons why it moved so much and then broke. This disaster made it clear that testing bridges in wind tunnels was necessary.

As a result, bridge design changed a lot. Engineers started using special devices to stop bridges from swinging too much and created stronger design rules. These changes help make sure that big bridges can stand up to wind without getting damaged.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is a crucial lesson in the need for strong and reliable engineering. On March 11, 2011, a huge earthquake, with a strength of 9.0, shook Japan and caused a major failure at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This event showed how important it is for machines and structures to be able to survive natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.

After the earthquake, a tsunami followed, which made things even worse. The power plant lost power, which meant the cooling systems for three of its reactors stopped working. Without cooling, these reactors overheated and their cores melted down. This was a tragic example of what can go wrong when we don’t carefully think about the risks of building in areas where natural disasters can happen.

Later on, experts looked at what went wrong and found that the power plant wasn’t built to handle a tsunami of that size, and the emergency plans weren’t good enough for such a disaster. Now, the Fukushima disaster is a key example that engineers study. It shows the link between planning ahead, considering the environment, and the serious problems that can happen if we don’t.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Engineering

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig failed disastrously, causing a huge oil spill in the ocean. This event was significant because it showed how much we needed to improve our deep-sea drilling technology and how we respond to such disasters. Engineers had to look closely at how they build and check the safety of underwater equipment, such as blowout preventers, which are supposed to stop leaks. They also needed to make sure oil wells were designed to be very strong and could handle emergencies.

The spill made it clear that we must do better at predicting risks, watching over drilling as it happens, and creating tools that can handle the tough conditions at the bottom of the sea. After the spill, experts worked on making better plans for how to deal with such problems, which included using more advanced robots that can work underwater and creating better ways to quickly block leaking oil wells.

Engineers learned a lot from what happened with the Deepwater Horizon. They are using those lessons to try to make drilling in deep water safer, to reduce the chance of another big oil spill. This means continuing to develop new technology and safety measures that can prevent or quickly stop leaks if they do happen.

In summary, every case study shows different problems that mechanical engineers have to deal with.

For example, fixing the Hubble Space Telescope needed very accurate work, and getting the Mars Rover to move on Mars took a lot of creativity.

The fall of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi teach us that strong design and having a backup plan are very important.

The oil spill at Deepwater Horizon reminds us that safety features and thinking about the environment are essential.

These examples show that mechanical engineering involves many different areas and that it’s important to keep coming up with new ideas and to watch out for possible risks.

Solving Problems With Mechanical Engineering Equations

Exploring System Dynamics in Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering Technology Overview

Engineering Career

Setting Clear Career Objectives in Mechanical Engineering

Debunking Myths Why Mechanical Engineering Is Not Bad

Innovative Mini Project Ideas for Mechanical Engineering Students

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Engineering X commissioned the development of 18 unique case studies by awardees from across academia and industry about Safer Complex Systems

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The case studies cover a wide variety of complex system successes and failures, past and present, around the world. In examining these events, these case studies provide insights into how the design, construction, operation, management and governance of complex systems may result in safe or unsafe outcomes. Beyond informing future activities under our programme, we hope that the cross-cutting factors and lessons learned brought to light by these case studies will help to create safer complex systems globally.

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Published: 14 September 2022

Community-oriented engineering co-design: case studies from the Peruvian Highlands

Diego Andía ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2766-7836 1 ,
Samuel Charca 2 ,
Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar 3 &
Julien Noel ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9284-9025 2

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 9 , Article number: 311 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Science, technology and society

The goal of an engineer’s career is solving real problems for social and ecological betterment. At the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima, Peru, this vision is promoted from the earliest stages of a student’s engineering career to enable them to embrace their creativity while developing meaningful solutions for ecosystems in need. In this article, an educational methodology is presented that uses a project-based collaborative learning approach with the aim of evaluating, selecting and developing community-oriented engineering solutions in the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). Communication strategies and evaluation of projects based on co-design methods implemented among engineering students and isolated rural communities in the highlands of Peru are discussed. In conclusion, the process to select a community is analyzed and the most important criteria are determined. In addition, we highlight the importance of defining elements to understand the context (community and place) and to establish future objectives (group and projects) during the exploration period that will help facilitate the decision to select a community.

Strategies for developing sustainable communities in higher education institutions

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Co-learning in university-community engagement for sustainable local food systems in South Africa

Introduction.

Despite advances in fields such as human science, engineering and technology, many people do not see material enhancements of their lived experiences or even to access basic needs. Poverty remains one of the long-lasting “wicked” problems of society. Today, more than 4.5 billion people do not have access to products and services necessary to meet basic needs, such as clean energy, water, healthy food or a home suited to weather conditions, among others (OMS, 2017 ). This portion of the population has been denominated by economists as the ‘ Base of the Pyramid’ (BoP), for being the largest sector of the economic pyramid. Although the term reduces the narrative around poverty and the concept of markets, it is useful to quantify and illustrate the large number of opportunities present in BoP environments, some of which exist beyond markets themselves. The design, construction and use of practical solutions through engineering, in concert with local knowledge and expertize, can help to address problems faced locally within BoP communities.

From an economic standpoint, BoP markets, a segment that encompasses the world’s poorest communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, are forecasted to grow to six billion in around 20 years’ time (Prahalad & Hart, 2002 ). There are numerous factors that can draw back this window of opportunity. It is crucial to establish which factors can enable communities to take advantage of this promising projection or reject participation in exchange for development at a local level. Enacting either of these options must go hand in hand with the integration of appropriate knowledge at the local level, allowing for more comprehensive visions of development.

Nowadays, universities guide their teaching methodology towards the creation of new technologies or the design of products, which they later seek to place in a specific market segment. Most of the time, though, these innovations are not made to take into account or directly include BoP populations. Fortunately, recent shifts within STEM education are changing this notion. Universities are including courses in sustainability and social responsibility to ensure that students understand that an engineer needs to serve the community in a socially responsible and sustainable way (de Vere et al., 2009 ). At our university, we challenge students to develop interdisciplinary projects as part of an active learning methodology to increase the engineer’s technical and soft skills (Vega & Ortiz, 2018 ; Murray et al., 2016 ; Vega et al., 2018 ). In addition, many people and designers are invoking innovation as the foundation of their projects. In a recent CEO Global Study (Cooper, 2016 ), 53% of the respondents agreed that R&D and innovation technologies were generating the greatest return in terms of successful stakeholder engagement. This rate gives us an idea of the value of the innovation factor. It becomes apparent that the way to innovate is not the same for each market segment. Many environments where BoP populations live are not suitable for the development of products that require expensive materials or equipment. One of the main differences between innovation at the BoP and at other levels of the economic pyramid is that innovation at the BoP is not about creating new product features, but about adapting existing products, highlighting or remixing local products in accordance to different cultural backgrounds (Anderson & Markides, 2007 ). In summary, the notion of innovation also needs to be expanded.

Other authors mention how enterprises can be beneficial in order to build fraternal relationships between communities and institutions, capable of providing added value to their production chain and potentially improving the quality of life of the people. Projects aiming to succeed in economically constrained areas need wide community participation, among other things, and should be led by engineering teams through co-design methods (Reynolds-Cuéllar & Delgado Ramos, 2020 ). Following these guidelines has the potential to increase effectiveness in terms of addressing the need or opportunity being approached (Castillo et al., 2012 ). For this to happen, it is important to identify answers to questions such as: who is the target population? Are the necessary conditions present for collaboration across all parties? Which products/services will be co-designed and offered? How can such products/services be made as cost-efficient as possible? How can we make the process as inclusive as possible?

In this context, collaboration with BoP communities can lead to the development of products and services that are both effective and respectful of local dynamics; when there are no attempts at collaboration the exercise can prove futile. Even this comprehensive approach to products and service development is not enough to completely avoid risk. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that all stakeholders should be involved at every stage of development, from need/opportunity assessment all the way to the deployment of outcomes. Such designs should focus not only on technological application but should should also take into account a variety of cultural, ecological, and societal nuances (Manzini & Vezzoli, 2005 ). These steps are necessary so that new engineers can provide feasible pathways for long term impacts (Anderson & Markides, 2007 ). Therefore, it is important to understand the current situations of BoP communities in order to identify variables that will allow a diagnosis of their current context and the main needs that each community may have. Fortunately, the co-design process allows all parties to be involved and, in this way, helps to ensure and adjust the needs to build a better project and/or service.

In this paper, we propose a framework for the development of projects in collaboration with members of BoP populations. We illustrate it using a case study in Peru, introducing a model that takes into account a set of factors to identify, select and execute co-design projects. It sets a concrete foundation of contemporary themes and challenges for future research in BoP communities. The goal of these co-design projects is two-fold: (1) to expose engineering students at a Peruvian university to the practice of community-based projects, and (2) to use these projects as a concrete avenue for students to effect positive change in historically marginalized populations. Achieving these goals will provide engineers with methodological tools to engage in grassroots, low-cost cultures of innovation, while producing a net-positive outcome in society. This is fundamental in order for the engineers of the future to see themselves as agents of change in their own communities.

Case studies: Peruvian Highlands

For this research, we gathered information from three communities around the city of Tarma, which is part of the department and region of Junín: (1) Sayancancha, (2) Acshuchacra, and (3) Rayampampa (Fig. 1 ). Tarma is located 232 kilometers northwest of Lima, in the Andes Mountain range. Its most important economic activities pertain to the service sector (commerce, tourism) and the public sector (public administration, health, and education). Trade depends on local agricultural products.

This figure shows the map of Peru and the location/proximity of the three communities in Tarma, in the central highlands.

Most of the families in the communities live in “ adobe ” (mud bricks) houses, with a few exceptions of constructions involving noble (concrete) materials. The roofs are made of zinc corrugated roofing sheets. The windows are made of glass or plastic sheets, and the doors are made of wood. As these houses were built without any technical supervision, there are holes in the walls, doors, windows and ceilings (Fig. 2 ). Each house has a kitchen made from stones and clay, which has three burners: one at the front and two at the back, with an entrance for firewood and another for cleaning the ashes. The kitchen is used to cook a diet rich in carbohydrates, with a notable absence of protein. Likewise, the stove is also used to dry clothes and firewood and serves to heat the indoor environment and help with raising guinea pigs. It is common for families to eat produce that they grew themselves, such as potatoes (the main agricultural product in the area).

This figure shows the current conditions of the communities, as the houses were built without any technical supervision, there are holes in the walls, doors, windows and roofs.

The communities are organized by community leaders, who are elected every 2 years and have monthly general meetings to discuss various issues associated with the community. Among the main issues on the agenda are often land disposal and the maintenance of access roads. In the culture of Andean communities, these leaders have an important role since they are the ones who decide on the activities to be carried out. The evaluated communities are the following:

Sanyacancha (−11.4712, −75.7753) is located 1 h and 30 min by truck from Tarma. The community has 30 families and averages ~150 people: 80 women and men, 16 children in primary school and eight children in secondary school. The rest leave the region to study, and few return to the town. There is a primary school and a medical post that is open once a week.

Acshuchara (−11.153, −75.5815) is located 3 h and 30 min from Tarma. The community is small and has an average of eight to nine families and it is described as the following: 12–15 community members, five children, nine women and 20 men. There is a very large migration effect since many men do not want to work harvesting potatoes and go to Lima when they are 25–30 years old. There are hamlets, also called annexes, that have to hire labor from Huancavelica for the harvest season.

Rayampampa (−11.2188, −75.5441) has up to 40 families (68 adults out of 110 inhabitants approximately) scattered over 22,000 hectares. This community is located 1 h and 30 min by truck from Tarma. The access route is a paved zigzag trail, where landslides occasionally occur during the summer season, due to heavy rains. Rayampampa has three buildings for education: one of prefabricated material and two of concrete material. Currently, only two are in operation, the oldest being dedicated to alternating secondary education. The second of the two operating buildings was opened in 2015 for pre-school and primary education.

Regarding the climate, the average temperature in Tarma (−11.418611 −75.690833), is 20 °C during the day and 5 °C at night, with intense rains and preponderant fog. The lowest temperatures occur between the months of May and June, when there is also a humidity level of ~85%.

Framework: Engineering for Social Change

In the following sections, we introduce our framework for establishing collaborations with BoP communities. We start by describing the criteria involved in the framework (Smith & Leith, 2015 ) and provide examples connected to the case studies described in the previous section. The criteria for selecting a community are crucial to the projects’ success. More often than not, developing criteria for establishing successful collaborations is replaced with technology transfer processes that look for under-resourced populations to provide with technologies that cannot feasibly be sustained over time. The complexity of developing criteria for successful collaborations comes from the fact that simple actions or decisions can deeply affect the success of a project. Therefore, it is important to account for as many factors as possible in connection to the decision-making, deployment and sustainment of projects. Regarding ethical approval, the Declaration of Helsinki was not relevant because we have not made an ethics diagnosis of the human being from the community, only living observation to improve community members’ quality of life (Fig. 3 ).

This figure shows the participation and involvement of the team with the community, children and adults, and how we support different talks and workshops for the development of the projects.

For example, working with an NGO can provide relatively easy access to communities as well as connections to ongoing projects. It can also allow access to funding through larger organizations. However, given that NGOs often have very specific goals, this interaction could lead to a reduction in the number of pathways a project could take, leaving out potentially impactful and interesting projects stemming directly from communities. When working with NGOs, it is crucial to maintain balance and leave space for local visions of the future to develop. Ultimately, creating solutions for the BoP requires a systemic approach based on a variety of community-based work strategies that introduce not only new technologies but also new meanings to end-users (Castillo et al., 2012 ).

Here, we present a set of basic criteria and factors for community-based needs assessment prior to project selection. These factors were used as part of the aforementioned case studies and later improved following lessons learned gained throughout the process. It is important to highlight that the goals of each project may affect the importance of each criterion. We illustrate this with examples below.

Community selection criteria

Relationship building with communities began almost 6 months before the international team traveled to the selected territory. The project head contacted community leaders and NGOs, and travel arrangements were made to visit a group of communities. The goal was to seek consensus from multiple independent evaluators (three local/national and one international) with regards to which community group to select. The relationship building period was done during a week in which two communities were visited each day. At the end of this period, evaluators reduced the list to three finalists and a final choice was made.

Proper community engagement involves an analysis of the conditions, advantages, disadvantages and limitations of any potential collaboration. This allows all parties to establish and define clear objectives for the proposed project as well as to develop contingency plans to mitigate the effects of unwanted events. This stage is very important, as sustainability is key to success after the first 3 weeks following a project’s launch. Furthermore, it is important to follow up on projects by returning to communities both 6 months and then 1 year after to evaluate impact. In this case, at the time of returning to the communities for the second stage of the project, there had been changes in community leadership that made it difficult to work collaboratively again. The overall project was developed over a period of 18 months (relationship building and project development, plus the six and 12 month follow-up monitoring) for the first stage of sustainability. The second stage was planned to focus on product development and corporate social responsibility.

It has been stated that a community is a dynamic social group that has its own history and is culturally constituted and developed (Glisson et al., 2012 ). In what follows, we introduce a proposed framework of categories looking at key aspects of community collaborations. Information about the following criteria was collected through a variety of methods including interviews, brainstorming sessions and community meetings. We used the User Research Framework methods, developed by the MIT D-Lab (Smith & Leith, 2015 ), as this manual gives great insight into community practices from all over the world. Using this framework, students evaluated community visit scenarios in order to define field activities and possible future projects. We acknowledge that this list is not exhaustive and that each project may have distinct factors to consider. Our goal is to provide a structure that can serve as a scaffold for engineering projects.

Willingness to participate

Properly gauging a community’s willingness to collaborate in co-design processes is one of the most important factors when determining the feasibility of projects. Given that this type of collaboration requires a high level of engagement from all parties, and that the first step for successful collaboration is the desire to exchange knowledge, making sure that communities and other stakeholders see the value of the overall process is essential. It is important to understand that not all communities are interested in collaborating. Many already have systems for self-determination, for governance and for development plans that are the result of long-standing local processes. Determining if such dynamics are in place can mean the difference between a project that fails and one that succeeds. For our co-design process, only engaged participants were part of the project, and no informed consent was necessary because this article does not contain any ethics studies with human participants performed by any of the authors, avoiding the risk of including sensitive information of the participants that could damage their reputation.

A key factor to consider when exploring community collaboration is to determine a cost/benefit analysis. This is particularly relevant for projects within higher education where resources could be limited. Working in remote areas could require significant investment in the transportation of both people and infrastructure. It is possible that these costs, in addition to other project-related costs, could outweigh the potential benefits of collaboration. For example, working in remote locations might mean limited access to communications, making the possibility of accessing information over the internet or coordinating logistics cumbersome. This can be further exacerbated by the need to ensure a robust emergency plan.

Local connections

As mentioned before, integrating members from local communities into the team is a fundamental step in the co-design process, not only in terms of the development of the project itself, but also in terms of managing the collaboration (Reynolds-Cuéllar, Delgado Ramos, 2020 ). For example, community members can easily help to make prior arrangements and support logistical activities in preparation for field trips. In Peru, for example, mistrust and a lack of credibility caused by a long-lasting history of crime and violence can make communities wary of engaging with external collaborators. Local connections can help to bridge this trust gap and effectively manage expectations among community members.

Basic services

Access to basic services within communities is another important variable to consider, especially throughout the field-based stages of the project. Inadequate infrastructure for key services can put teams at risk. Services such as water supply, proper sanitation facilities, access to electricity, access to food sources and health infrastructure are vital to ensure projects can be implemented as well as to avoid health issues while guaranteeing proper nutrition during field work. This is not to say that communities with no access to basic services should be negatively assessed under our framework. We consider the means to boil water, the presence of latrines and limited local food options as access to basic services. When options such as these are not in place, teams should explore other avenues to remediate these circumstances (e.g., transporting potable water). Health, on the other hand, is a more serious consideration, especially in light of the current state of health infrastructure and assistance in isolated places in Peru. In the case of our communities, we made sure to take this factor into account; each community has a small, basic medical center where a doctor (usually a residency practitioner) visits every 2 or 3 weeks for half a day to treat and diagnose members of the community. Public transportation to and from the community is scarce; only one vehicle (a car or a truck) goes up and down the mountain to the community each day. Because of this, community members who require inmediate/specialized medical attention must call someone from the city (Tarma for this specific study) to come to the community and drive them to a clinic. With that said, basic services such as water supply, proper sanitation facilities, access to electricity and access to food sources are not as essential as health infrastructure, although still useful to provide comfort when possible.

Personal safety is a key requirement for successfully developing projects involving field work. For this reason, during the exploratory phase, it is necessary to identify both internal and external risks. We propose two main aspects of safety to be taken into account.

Socio-political internal/external conflicts: referring to threats from internal dynamics beyond the community’s control, including religious differences hindering communication or political conflicts revolving around territorial, economic or social power. Information regarding local safety can be provided by local authorities. Some of these conflicts, and the risk they pose to work in the field, can be assessed by safety departments within universities through access to global information systems. A good practice is to triangulate information from different sources in order to avoid misinformation.

Natural disasters: remote areas are often susceptible to natural disasters due to weather conditions. While the probability of major natural disasters is low, some areas can experience repeated weather phenomena during particular seasons of the year. Therefore, the timing of projects should take this into account.

Potential for impact

Another criterion that should be taken into account has to do with the expected impact of the project. This can be approached in terms of the educational impact for students, community members and other important stakeholders within the project. Some factors to guide this analysis include the potential for livelihood improvement, the ecological advantages, the number of communities that the results of the project can reach and the contribution to the communities’ wellbeing. Whichever dimensions are chosen for analysis, it is important to clearly establish what the project sets out to do, quantify these expectations and transform them into measurable objectives. This point can prove useful when determining the expected outcome of a given project.

Community partner analysis model

What follows is the proposal for a weighted matrix to analyze the aforementioned factors in reference to potential partner communities. Once relevant aspects for a given project are considered and factored into the decision-making process, we propose the use of a scoring model (Table 1 ). This model allows different actors to explore the feasibility of each community partnership based on these weighted factors. It should be noted that these scores are subjective and may vary depending on research and field work done prior to the project. It is also important to mention that the sum of the ratings should be equal to 100%. The model is highly customizable in that it allows key factors to be evaluated and weighted in function of the risk or importance of the project and its location. In our case, the community’s willingness to contribute to the project and the active participation of a community liaison were crucial in planning projects; therefore, we assigned a 25% weight to the combination of those two factors and gave the project’s potential for impact a weight of 10%. Then, we determined that basic services, location and safety of the team would receive a weight of 15% each given they were key factors. Completing the model, local connections had a weight of 20% to make sure that the project was up and running on time.

A 1 to 4 weighted scale (where 1 is poor and 4 the optimum) was proposed to subjectively evaluate how each factor behaves across different communities (Table 2 ). The weighted score of each item may be relative and can be improved with details and additional weight; however, it was considered a scale for each score factor from 1 to 4. A score of 1 represents a range from 0 to to 25%, 2 from 26 to 50%, 3 from 51 to 75% and 4 above 75%. The weight ranges can also be moved up and down within a 10% margin. In addition to the weights for each item, it was decided (according to the scouting made 6 months beforehand) to add a description of each item that allows for two objectives: first, to evaluate each community under the same parameters/conditions and second, to quantify and standardize a ranking between 1–4, where 1 is the lowest and 4 is the highest score. At the end of an evaluation, most evaluators will have a similar perception of the basis score weight.

Using the model

Table 3 shows the evaluation of the proposed scoring factors for the three partnering communities. This evaluation was done during the scouting and evaluation process. It is important to mention that, prior to this part of the process, other communities were considered. However, since two of the key criteria for this collaboration were that transport to the location would not exceed 4 h (some of these communities are located less than 4 h from Tarma, but transportation time could potentially be increased due to difficult road access) and that no strong internal conflicts were present, these communities were not included in the evaluation stage of the collaboration.

Using this tool, we were able to highlight the potential for collaboration with the Rayampampa communities in regards to this particular project. Having collected all of our information through the usage of methods such as interviews, community gatherings and collective ideation allowed us to build strong relationships with community members in order to explore a variety of projects. For example, it allowed us to play an active part in leadership processes surrounding the communities’ current issues. In the following sections, we expand on our decision-making process based on the results of the weighted matrix. The next section presents the qualitative analysis of each of the factors, referring to the advantages and disadvantages of partnering with each community. In this way, it seeks to show how the decision was made to select one community and not the others.

First, we took into consideration the amount of effort and engagement a community could provide to the project. This was determined based on a variety of factors internal to the community related to governance, availability of time and trust, among others. We adhered to the communities’ processes as we regarded this part of the process as fundamental to the success of the proposed project. From the beginning of the work (scouting), Rayampampa and Acshuchacra community members showed great openness and initiative towards partnering. On the other hand, the director of the Sayancancha school did not show the same interest due to previous problems with NGOs. This history created mistrust, which made it difficult to continue collaborating with this community.

We also considered the number of families in each community and the availability of natural resources in the surrounding areas. These two factors were key as the initiative sought to reach a large group of families and emphasize the importance of working with surrounding ecosystems. Taking this into consideration, Rayampampa (about 20 families) turned out to be a larger community than Acshuchacra and had the availability of natural resources necessary to carry out the project. Acshuchacra, on the other hand, is a very small and isolated community with a maximum of 10 families and did not have the necessary support to develop the project. Rayampampa, in addition to having many community members willing to participate in the project, also had local officials willing to collaborate with us. These two factors made the difference for our decision, as they signaled strong community commitment.

The desire to participate, collectively design and coordinate a program is key when selecting a community. It legitimizes local knowledge and the right of the community to self-determination while allowing external teams to provide support and partnership to explore solutions together. This virtuous cycle also allows for external teams to stay engaged, eager to learn and producing research work (Charca et al., 2015 ; Mori et al., 2019 ).

The second relevant factor was access to basic services, such as drinking water, food, electricity and a sewer system. Rayampampa, unlike the other communities, met the necessary requirements because it has access to both basic services and to stores for basic resources including food. However, we recognize and want to acknowledge the importance of not centering on this criterion. Doing so runs the risk of expanding already existing gaps and leaving out partnerships with communities that do not have this infrastructure. Sayancancha and Acshuchacra do not have all the necessary basic services, requiring travel to the nearest city of Tarma for food and other goods, which would have made our stay for this specific initiative difficult.

Rural communities, particularly in the Global South, are among the most impacted groups with regards to access to basic services. Therefore, these services should not necessarily be a requirement for the success of a project. Instead, the improvement of such services can be made a part of the development and growth of a project. This creates a shared responsibility that invites and elicits participation from the entire community (Meirinawati & Pradana, 2018 ).

As the initiative required participation from different teams and the projects required moving tools in order to manufacture on-site, reliable transportation infrastructure was important. In this regard, the best community was Sayancancha based on travel distances and the condition of the roads between there and Tarma. Rayampampa, on the other hand, is located 3 h from Tarma, while Acshuchacra turned out to be the farthest community (5 h by truck and an additional hour of walking from the city). Since Acshuchacra was the most remote, transportation would be both impractical and potentially dangerous given the lack of infrastructure. This is not to say that these factors would make it unlikely for any project to take place and maybe other groups could still conduct projects with them in the future. On the contrary, when analyzing the potential for impact of the project for both Rayampampa and Acshuchacra, it became clear to us that Acshuchacra was a much better fit given their access, albeit limited to basic services. However, the logistical hurdles related to the equipment and personnel required for this project made it infeasible to consider Acshuchacra as a partner.

The community that had the best infrastructure turned out to be Rayampampa, since it had a new educational building (a primary and secondary school with showers) that had been built by the local state and that would make our stay easier. The other two communities did not have adequate infrastructure and had more rudimentary buildings.

Engagement and local connections for the three communities were rather similar. On the one hand, Rayampampa, Aschuchacra and Sayancancha are all within the same geographical area, so there were no significant cultural differences. On the other hand, the contact person who had access to each community turned out to be the same contact in the city of Tarma. Since the three communities were close to Tarma, maintaining this connection was key in order to facilitate community visits, secure resources and build trust with community members. It is very difficult to generate trust and efficiency if you do not have a local contact.

As mentioned earlier, safety was one of the most important factors when evaluating partnerships with these three communities. The main points in this regard were the absence of internal conflict and access to basic safety resources such as a medical post.

In Rayampampa, no internal conflicts were found within the community or at a regional level, and team members could live together in the community, allowing them to take part in community activities such as visiting families in their homes in the morning to participate in breakfast and then working with community members in the field during the day. In Sayancancha, as previously mentioned, there was mistrust based on previous engagements with NGOs in the area. Additionally, accommodation arrangements there would have required complicated layouts, which would have made it difficult for teams to have access to working spaces. In regards to Acshuchacra it lacked a nearby medical post, which would have created a risk in the case that any member of the team needed immediate medical attention. The medical post was 3 h away and, due to the rainy season, difficult to access.

Finally, the potential for impact in each community was evaluated. As mentioned before, having the opportunity to reach a group of at least 20 families was one of the goals of the project. The Rayampampa community had also expressed interest in disseminating learnings from the program to the other potential partners. From the nearly 20 families who received training, a good portion are on their way to share learnings with the Acshuchacra community.

By using this model, and through visits and evaluation, we were able to determine that the Rayampampa community was the best fit for the project. Before wrapping up on site, a plan was co-developed with the community in order to return within the next 6 months after the first stage for follow-up purposes and to ensure the sustainability of the project. The main objective of this model is to provide a tool to assess and evaluate the main conditions of a community with regards to partnering within the context of educational projects. The factors included are tailored to a particular context. These factors, including the priority assigned to each variable, can be changed, especially when different locations are defined.

Limitations and direction for future research

Peru does not have a wide culture for Research & Development (R&D). According to De los Ríos et al. ( 2010 ), for many years companies have pointed to higher education as the root of this gap. Insufficient preparation for research and creation, excessive theoretical instruction with a reduced practical component, knowledge that is too general without sufficient specialization and updated knowledge and meager preparation for directing teams are among the main deficiencies within university education in Peru. One of the great challenges facing the university system is to demonstrate the capacity for adaptation to the changes and new demands of today’s society, in which the concept of professional life focuses on what are called professional competencies (De Los Rios et al., 2010 ).

Another important aspect of the proper execution of projects at the Base of the Pyramid is the selection of the team. The members must be responsible for achieving the initially set objectives, which must be clear, measurable and achievable. Teamwork is a crucial variable for project execution and performance in the real world, and the challenge is to define the variables necessary to create a fit and a holistic approach for team members. There must be a selection process oriented to the research objectives that helps to define the functions to be performed by each member, including the role of the students and the technical skills necessary for the job.

Furthermore, one limitation to developing these projects is the process of carrying out field work, following up and generally building solid relationships with the community. This process takes time, and not all design teams have the opportunity to see it through. To truly connect with people and their problems and generate proposals for community intervention, a strategy involving grassroots work is required. This is achieved through field work, the use of common language, the use of the codes and symbols of a community and a domain of the values circulating on the social network. Therefore, it is also necessary to study the community in order to establish a stable and mature relationship that guarantees the success of the project over time and that allows for the development of projects with few to no complications.

Most companies do have a social responsibility department to generate capacity building for the community. However, companies have to recognize that they have a way to go in terms of creating the capacity to offer opportunities to young engineers or other professionals with a social/community-oriented profile. Additionally, the profile of the student in general should focus on key values such as commitment, motivation and proactivity. Going forward, companies and universities need to define a marketing strategy and look for project opportunities with a social context. Until the professional sector develops this dimension, even when students are taught social sensitivity, the market will ultimately force them to place themselves in traditional engineering jobs.

In this work, we have presented the criteria for the selection of a community to develop Base of the Pyramid projects. When not working with an NGO, the process of deciding on the criteria to select a community is key to having a successful project. Meanwhile, defining key elements to understand the context (community and place) and establishing future key objectives (group and projects) during the scouting period will help facilitate the decision of selecting a community. None of the defined factors are eliminating factors, unless they put teams in dangerous environments. During this process, we presented a real case of community selection in the highlands of Peru.

It is important to mention that the factors for selection will correspond to a specific context, in this case Rayampampa. Therefore, the factors must be identified, analyzed and evaluated so that they fit, as best as possible, the reality and context of the chosen community. In this way, potential risks are reduced and better controlled. One of the keys to ensuring that the project is a success is precisely to understand the context and basic needs of the community. The factors presented can be taken as a guide; however, a strong relationship must be established with the community in order to ensure the effective execution of the project.

As mentioned before, we consider it of great importance to approach these projects with a sense of a social responsibility. This is to say that, during the process of setting up, developing, operating and continuing these projects, we infused them with a vision of commitment to society through the construction of new knowledge in collaboration with community partners. This process can additionally be extrapolated to solve other problems or take advantage of other opportunities. By approaching projects through this lense, we can improve both the professional and personal experiences of teams and communities while improving the quality of life in communities in a sustainable way.

To conclude, when considering the “potential for impact” factor, one needs to be open-minded in terms of changing variables at any time throughout the duration of the project. Much positive change will come from the experience gained through the challenges and interaction with the community as both “worlds” are connected to improve the lives of their respective members and learn from each other.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

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Diego Andía

Energy Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Department at the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología—UTEC, Lima, Peru

Samuel Charca & Julien Noel

MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA

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Andía, D., Charca, S., Reynolds-Cuéllar, P. et al. Community-oriented engineering co-design: case studies from the Peruvian Highlands. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 311 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01331-0

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Writing a Case Study Report in Engineering

Welcome to this online resource on writing a case study. While it was developed for risk management students, it may also be useful for other students writing a case study in engineering at UNSW. There are activities included and I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on the tasks before looking at comments. Time to read and complete activities is estimated at 1-2 hours.

What is a case study?

A case study is an account of an activity, event or problem that contains a real or hypothetical situation and includes the complexities you would encounter in the workplace. Case studies are used to help you see how the complexities of real life influence decisions.

Analysing a case study requires you to practice applying your knowledge and your thinking skills to a real situation. To learn from a case study analysis you will be "analysing, applying knowledge, reasoning and drawing conclusions" (Kardos & Smith 1979).

According to Kardos and Smith (1979) a good case has the following features:

It is taken from real life (true identities may be concealed).
It consists of many parts and each part usually ends with problems and points for discussion. There may not be a clear cut off point to the situation.
It includes sufficient information for the reader to treat problems and issues.
It is believable for the reader (the case contains the setting, personalities, sequence of events, problems and conflicts)

Types of case study

Your course may include all the information you require for the case study and in this case all students would be analysing the same case study. This may take the form of an historical case study where you analyse the causes and consequences of a situation and discuss the lessons learned. You are essentially outside the situation.

Other types of case studies require you to imagine or role play that you are in the situation and to make plausible recommendations to senior management or ministers. Some case studies require you to solve a problem by developing a new design. These types of case studies are problem orientated.

Alternatively you may be able to choose a real situation, such as an event in your workplace, to analyse as a case study, either as a problem orientated situation or an historical case /situation. In this instance, you would need to locate the information necessary to write a clear description of the case before you can analyse the situation and make recommendations.

Some examples of case study assignments are:

Historical case study

Take a recent company collapse (eg HIH, FROGGY, ENRON) and analyse what went wrong.

Problem orientated case study

Using cost benefit risk analysis, determine the current and future market opportunity of company X in country Y.

See next: Writing the case study

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Report writing
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Writing lab reports
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Study Hacks Workshops | All the hacks you need! 28 May – 25 Jul 2024

Real-World Examples of Value Analysis and Value Engineering

Adam Kimmel

January 4, 2024

Value analysis (VA) and value engineering (VE) are powerful tools to improve profitability and sustainability that maintain VA/VE cornerstones of function and quality while reducing cost. The concepts are distinct, but even seasoned engineers often use the terms “VA” and “VE” interchangeably. While the phrases are similar and often used together to describe the philosophy, VA and VE have differences that attack different points in a product’s lifecycle. This article explores these differences and provides value analysis and value engineering examples.

What is the difference between value analysis (VA) and value engineering (VE)?

The primary difference between VA and VE is the product lifecycle phase during which the engineering team performs the assessment. For example, value engineering applies to the initial design phase, where a component model may contain features the designer used to illustrate to function crudely. Conversely, value analysis refers to an existing product with at least one complete design and production cycle for insights into potential value improvement opportunities.

Both approaches have their place:

VE can improve the profitability of an initial launch that can carry sunk non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs and non-depreciated capital
VA considers real-world feedback as to which product features the market cares about, which ones complicate manufacturing, and which reduce operating efficiency.

But to understand the difference between VA and VE, it is helpful to leverage examples of each during the product lifecycle.

Value analysis example

Value analysis improves the value ratio (function/cost) by [objectively] analyzing all components of the product cost through a Pareto chart. This analysis includes the manufacturing process cost and proposes ways to increase value or function at the existing cost or remove cost while preserving function and quality.

Optimizing a plastic bottle closure design is an is an example of VA. A commercially-available bottle may have a delivery nozzle that threads onto the bottle and a separate sealing cap that attaches to the nozzle, protecting it from the air that could evaporate the product’s fluid. The cost Pareto may show that the sealing cap is significant to the overall product cost, leading the engineering team to design an integrated sealing cap-nozzle that provides both functions in one component.

This solution would likely require additional tooling for the new shape. Still, it would reduce a significant amount of material by removing a component (also a sustainability win) and the assembly time to place and install the cap. In addition, this design change would reduce manufacturing tolerance stack-ups that could reduce scrap rate or introduce an additional leak path.

Value engineering example

In contrast to the VA approach, which looks at the existing product cost structure, VE targets areas in the initial design that may carry excessive costs into a product launch. The term “cost-avoidance” (instead of cost reduction) refers to the applying a value-based approach at this phase.

Assembling two mature piece parts is an example of VE. A customer may ask the manufacturer to construct the joint between two system components. The initial design may amount to a bolt-on solution accomplished by extending mating flanges to the existing components to attach the parts.

Engineers could run this step through a VE analysis before launch to consider redesigning a more integrated joint, using less material, and potentially recommending a different manufacturing technique to incorporate joints into a single component.

Value analysis and value engineering case study

JCI’s Applied HVAC Equipment division previously used organization-based tools like Sharepoint and emailed static files for VA/VE projects, taking weeks to deliver the ideas. This process is similar to many companies and industries conducting these analyses routinely. As an industry leader, JCI wanted to step up its collaboration by implementing CoLab .

The initial implementation enrolled eight users in a single location; this access has since extended to more than 180 in 4 countries. JCI uses CoLab to cover VE processes like drawing reviews to achieve cost avoidance, and it employs the software for manufacturing process steps and existing products for VA. In addition, they now use CoLab for virtual real-time VA/VE events, pacing the market for efficient collaboration in value engineering and analysis.

VA/VE is not just about cost reduction. Engineers can improve a product’s function or quality profile or enhance profitability to uncover funding for capital or other investment projects. Whether the team is analyzing an initial design to optimize the year-one profitability or collaborating on a production part, it is essential to engage the team efficiently to empower them to generate high-quality ideas quickly.

Applying the principles of VA/VE within CoLab, a platform that smoothly facilitated virtual participation (quadrupling engagement and doubling actionable ideas all tracked within the 3D model), enabled JCI to deliver 8-figure targets in consecutive years.

Visit CoLab's VA/VE page to test drive CoLab software with a guided VA/VE virtual workshop.

Why engineering teams use plm + colab to improve design quality, how do i organize and prioritize design review issues in colab.

Engineering Case Studies

Jesmond Engineering has a wealth of experience in a wide range of engineering projects. Links to examples of case studies are provided below.

Yacht Hull Flow Optimisation Case Study

Jesmond was requested to simulate and optimise the wake of a marine vessel.

Pollution Reduction in Sugar Cane Processing Case Study

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Circular textiles bacterial cellulose production case study.

Jesmond Engineering has helped design bioreactors for a circular textiles system. This generates cellulose from…

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15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

Written by: Alice Corner Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a Case Study?

Business Case Study Examples

Simple case study examples.

Marketing Case Study Examples

Sales Case Study Examples

Case Study FAQs

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

Marketing Case Study Template

A marketing case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A marketing case study typically includes:

Company background and history
The challenge
How you helped
Specific actions taken
Visuals or Data
Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a marketing case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

Venngage orange marketing case study example

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately.

Purple SAAS Business Case Study Template

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn how to choose fonts effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and brand colors to Venngage using the My Brand Kit tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

Purple SAAS Business Case Study Template Header

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study.

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

event marketing project management gantt chart example

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

Contrast Lead Generation Business Case Study Template

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Blue Simple Business Case Study Template

Marketing case study examples

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Light simplebusiness case study template

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Modern lead Generaton Business Case Study Template

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design.

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Social Media Business Case Study template

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Gray Lead Generation Business Case Study Template

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Venngage's accessible color palette generator

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

Lead generation business case study template

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Lead generation case study example short term goals

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Vibrant Content Marketing Case Study Template

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Bold Content Marketing Case Study Template

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Teal Social Media Business Case Study Template

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Coral content marketing case study template.jpg

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Blue Content Marketing Case Study Tempalte

Case Study Examples Summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case Study FAQ

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers , business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

Why do you use our tool or service?
How often do you use our tool or service?
What does the process of using our product look like to you?
If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

IMAGES

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Design Engineers Case Studies and Examples in 2020
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