Contents

List of Symbols and Acronyms ................................................................................................................ 0

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1
2. Projects ........................................................................................................................................... 1
2.1 Project A: Large Medical Machine .......................................................................................... 1
Drive System ................................................................................................................................... 1
Prototype Development ................................................................................................................. 2
3. Skills................................................................................................................................................. 2
Induction / Training............................................................................................................................. 2
Drawing / Sketching ............................................................................................................................ 2
CAD...................................................................................................................................................... 2
4. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 3
5. Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... 3

List of Symbols and Acronyms

EPDM – Enterprise Product Data Management
 Industrial Placement Interim Report

1. Introduction
Sagentia is a technology consultancy and global product development company based in Harston in
the south of Cambridge. Employing about 150 consultants from a variety of scientific and
engineering backgrounds, the company assists clients throughout all stages of a product
development lifecycle. The consultants are divided into three departments or “skills groups”;
Embedded Systems, Mechanical Systems and Design, and Science and Technology. Depending on
the skills set required for a project, consultants from different divisions usually collaborate.

The work within the company is mainly project-based which means the amount of work to be done
fluctuates greatly throughout times. Typically, a consultant will work on 2-3 projects simultaneously,
which offers a large variety during a workday and helps individuals to build up on their expertise.

2. Projects
2.1 Project A: Large Medical Machine
The first project I got involved in was one of the longest-running projects in the company and
entailed the design and development of a large medical device in the field of cancer treatment. Due
to the vast scale of the project, an unusually high number of consultants from the electrical and
mechanical department of the company were involved and worked in collaboration with external
team members. At first, I found it hard to understand how that many people could work efficiently
on different parts of one machine with various sub-mechanisms, especially since every part was at
different stages in the design process, but it was interesting to see the methods of coordinating the
work.

As an example, once a week, the mechanical lead engineer organised a mechanical team stand-up
meeting, were every member of the team summarised what they were working on and at what
stage they were. Challenges they had faced were brought up and discussed briefly, and future
actions were outlined. This brought everybody’s understanding of the latest developments up to
date and ensured the project work was being split sensibly and efficiently among the available team
members. Even though other people’s tasks were sometimes not immediately relevant to me, I
found it important and motivating to see the variety of sub-mechanisms, each of which required
attention to a high level of detail.

Drive System
My first task was to design the drive system of a moving track system. This involved determining
different loads on the system, finding the appropriate drive components to meet the design
requirements and arranging the parts in a way that was compatible with the rest of the track system.
Although it meant that I could use the mechanical principles I had learned in the first two years of
my course, it also taught me how applying the theory in industry is very different to problem solving
at university. I learned that calculations in the initial design phases include a lot more unknowns and
most of the known information is still in the development process and thus changing. What I found
difficult at first was making decisions that were necessary in the design process: when the major
parts of the design were still unclear, I often did not know which part to prioritise, so I ended up
asking for a lot of guidance.

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Prototype Development
During the development phase of the track system it was considered useful to assess its movement
relative to another moving machine part by making a quarter-scale proof of principle model, while
keeping the cost and build time to a minimum. My second activity was therefore to design a smaller
scale model of the moving track system. The challenge was to design a model that mostly consisted
of standard or simplified parts, but still sufficiently represented the movement along the track
system. The task involved researching suppliers and contacting manufacturers for custom parts to
obtain an estimate of the cost and lead time.

For me, it was an opportunity to learn about methods of discussing engineering designs as it
required both quickly outlining parts of my design on the phone and explaining the details in an
email or a CAD drawing. Another interesting experience during this task was seeing how reviews and
feedback were handled. Before ordering parts for the model, it was necessary to discuss the
functional aspects of the rig and evaluate how well it would represent the original design. For that
purpose, a design review meeting was organised with the engineers who had previously worked on
that particular design, but also included the project manager and the technical team leaders to make
rounded decisions.

3. Skills
Induction / Training
At the beginning of my placement I was required to go through a self-training process to familiarise
myself with all procedures relevant to my role. To ensure the services Sagentia provides are in line
with the company’s quality requirements, all employees have regularly updated self-training forms,
a list of documents they need to read and familiarise themselves which. I was also invited to attend
the New Starters Induction, were I was given an overview of the different departments and
companies that are part of the Science Group.

Drawing / Sketching
Often, for an informal exchange of ideas during the concept generation phase, it is easiest to
communicate a design with a hand-drawn sketch. Moreover, I noticed that the best drawings often
draw the most attention in brainstorms and ideas are more likely to be accepted if accompanied by a
sketch.

During my time at university, I would never had thought to practise hand drawings in my own time,
but I realised how useful this ability was when I joined Sagentia and I began using perspective
drawings more, which led to an improvement in my drawing skills.

CAD
For any further developed design, Sagentia uses CAD software to demonstrate ideas. I therefore
spent my first three days familiarising myself with the most commonly used software in the
company, SolidWorks.

I also learned to use EPDM, a tool often used by engineers who create collaborate work on
SolidWorks. EPDM allows to save all SolidWorks parts and assembly in a vault, similar to a cloud,

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which is made accessible to all designers in the team. Any person with access can view the CAD
model; however, changes can only be made by extracting the part from the vault which
automatically locks it from being edited by another person. Once the changes have been made, it
can be loaded back into the vault and all assemblies containing the part will automatically be
uploaded. Learning to use EPDM was essential in Sagentia to ensure a history of the changes were
being kept and no files were lost on anybody’s personal account

4. Conclusion
My time at Sagentia so far has been an exciting and enjoyable experience. The Mechanical Systems
and Design department is a very friendly group of engineers who have been extremely welcoming
and assisted me whenever I needed help or was stuck.

As the main project I have been working on so far is an unusually long-running project, my personal
work has at times not been as rewarding as I would have liked. Due to the size of the team and the
product itself I often felt like my work was lost among all the other bits of the machine that were
being developed. It has however been a unique opportunity to get to know the work flow of such a
large project and also provided an insight of what I imagine larger companies to be like.

In terms of my personal development, I can already say that I have learned a lot, particularly about
the process of design in the industry of engineering consulting. Being surrounded by a team with
such a vast range of expertise and backgrounds and seeing how a variety of products go through the
different stages of development makes the company a truly inspiring place to work and I look
forward to future challenges I will be facing throughout the year.

5. Acknowledgements
I would like to thank:

Gary Stacey - Line Manager

Jim Coates - Design Task Supervisor

Mark Rogers, Alex Norman, Daniel Hibbert, others - Feedback and Support