CASE STUDY: Excavation Buckets Design and Manufacture Peter Border is a qualified mechanical engineer who graduated from the QTech University two years ago. Peter works for Trueblood, a small mechanical design and manufacturing company. Owner and founder of the company is William Trueblood. William qualified as a mechanical tradesman and saw the opportunity to build a business based on designing and manufacturing complex parts for large earthmoving equipment. The business was founded 35 years ago and today employs 55 people. Trueblood Enterprises currently has three professional engineers, Rohan Petronis (25 years of experience), Claude Weatherly (15 years of experience), and Peter. Claude is in charge of the manufacturing area while Rohan and Peter comprise the design and analysis division. Two months ago, Trueblood Enterprises were contracted by Cranbrook Excavators to design and manufacture an excavation buckets for a range of large excavators and draglines that the company manufactures. Cranbrook Excavators is a large company with total worldwide sales of about $2 billion (Australian). Trueblood Enterprises was elated to gain the contract as they had been trying for several years to secure a contract with Cranbrook Excavators. It is hoped that this initial contract will lead to further large contracts between the two companies. Design of the excavation buckets was undertaken by Rohan and Peter. The designed part was extremely difficult to analyse and eventually they adopted a design which they considered was adequate and safe, but with which they were not entirely happy. The design was done manually without modern 3D modelling and simulation tools. They would have liked to have had more time to carry out further analysis work, but the production area needed to get the parts into production in order to meet the timelines associated with the contract. The first batch of parts (10) has now been manufactured and delivered and Cranbrook Enterprises has expressed their pleasure at the way in which the contract has been fulfilled to date. The contract calls for the manufacture of a further 100 parts over the next 18 months. The contract price for the parts is $22 000 each, and Trueblood Enterprises currently estimates that the total cost of design and manufacture will be $18 500 each. Although busy with other work since the finalisation of the design for the excavation buckets, Peter has continued to ponder how the analysis of the part could be improved. Last night he had a sudden flash of inspiration and two hours calculation this morning has provided a much improved understanding of the stress distribution which is likely to occur in the bucket design. On reviewing the new analysis, Peter becomes concerned that the existing design may create the possibility of fatigue failure in the longer term. Further analysis leads him to the conclusion that the premature failure of the existing units is a distinct possibility, although failure is unlikely to occur until 15,000 hours, though this needs to be further validated. The original contract specification asked for a minimum fatigue life of 20,000 hours. Peter also does a quick estimate of the likely cost of using an improved design in manufacturing and estimates that the cost per part will rise to $20 500.

Peter discusses his findings with Rohan. Initially Rohan is reluctant to take any action whatsoever, as he considers it would reflect poorly on the design and analysis division, and particularly on his inherent leadership of that area based on his extended years of experience. When Peter presses the issue and threatens to go directly to William Trueblood, Rohan agrees to set up a meeting between William, Peter and himself. At the meeting, Peter presents his findings and recommends that the new design be adopted for production, and that the parts already manufactured and supplied be recalled from Cranbrook Excavators. Predictably, William Trueblood gets very upset and irate. He asks if the parts that have already been supplied are in danger of imminent failure and Rohan says no. William Trueblood states that his decision is that the current parts will not be recalled and the production process will continue to manufacture the existing design and not the new design. He says that the existing part is "safe enough" and the company cannot afford to increase the cost of production. He also says that he is extremely disappointed with the performance of Rohan and Peter, and that the design and analysis division needs to "get its act together or the company will have to consider closing this division and outsourcing its design work". He also says that if Rohan or Peter so much as blink an eyelid out of place in the future they will be sacked from the company! - Identify and discuss the management, contractual and ethical issues involved in this case. What courses of action would be appropriate for Peter to follow (starting immediately)?

- The answer should be no more than 3000 words. This is merely a guide and there is no penalty associated with this word count. The final section of the main body of the report should clearly identify the courses of action that Peter should follow. This section will be a major section of the report on which technical content will be judged. The conclusions reached and action recommended, however, will need to be supported by the arguments presented in the previous sections of the report. This final section should be between 200 and 250 words in length.

- Your report should have a formal format with title page, executive summary, contents page and references. The report should be word processed