by Carl F. Zorowski (Author)
Solving practical problems in everyday engineering practice is a far cry from the textbook exercises experienced in academia. Real engineering problems are more complex and generally ill defined; containing poorly stated needs, extraneous information, conflicting goals and other complicating factors. These problems require the skills of creativity and innovation to synthesize and analyze information and knowledge through a logical progression of tasks to arrive at meaningful effective solutions. This monograph investigates the roles of synthesis and analysis as mental activities together with how they relate to creativity and innovation. A set of sequential tasks is presented that defines a generic problem solving process based on synthesis and analysis. Several real engineering problems with detailed solutions demonstrate the application of this "Engineering Practice Process" problem solving procedure.
Author Biography
Carl F . Zorowski is R. J. Reynolds Professor Emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. He taught at CMU from 1956 to 1962 before going to North Carolina State University. He served as Head of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Associate Dean for Academic Affair in the College of Engineering. He was also cofounder and Director of the Integrated Manufacturing Systems Institute, an early interdisciplinary master's practice program at NCSU. His passion is classroom instruction, course content development and delivery methods emphasizing mathematical modeling and design performance analysis of mechanical systems. Following retirement in 1997 he has offered graduate level courses in Mechanical Design Engineering for the College's "Engineering on Line" distance education master's degree program. He is a fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.