4  Engineering Problem Solving and Systems Thinking

Week 4 Planned, awaiting draft

ImportantLearning objectives (tentative)

By the end of this week you should be able to:

1. Apply a structured method to an open-ended engineering problem.
2. Represent a process with a flowchart.

NoteComing soon

These lecture notes will be written from the instructor’s Week 4 draft. The topics below are a working outline.

4.1 Planned topics

• A structured problem-solving process
• Systems thinking and feedback
• Drawing a process flowchart
• Estimating and checking answers

NoteKey terms in this chapter

• Process flowchart — A diagram that shows the sequence of steps, decisions, and flows in a process using standard symbols.
• Systems thinking — An approach that studies how the parts of a system interact and influence the whole, rather than optimizing parts in isolation.