Preliminary Design
Report
Siemens
Sponsor: Siemens
The Pennsylvania State
University
EDSN100
Section 006
Colin Nitroy
Brandon Goss
Jeff Hauck
Matt Ciarrocca
Katrina Malaski
Siemens gave us the goal of making the Penn
State campus more sustainable. Our team
realizes that transportation around campus is
not only a problem, but also an opportunity for
the school to implement more efficient forms of
campus travel while becoming more
sustainable. The research we conducted
showed a resounding need for an inexpensive
form of transportation that will also provide a
level of convenience for the student body. To
meet all these criteria we deemed that the most
effective method would be to implement a
bicycle sharing system throughout the Penn
State campus. This system will then be
accessible by students and staff for a minimum
cost and will encourage both environmentally
sustainable and physically active behavior.
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................... 2
Problem Statement ............................... 3
Concept of Operation ........................... 3
Gathering Information .......................... 3
Specifications ....................................... 4
Schedule ............................................... 5
Concept Development ....................................... 5
Detailed Concept Development ......................... 7
Appendix ......................................................... 10
1
Introduction
Siemens came to our campus with a clear task at hand, one that promised great
opportunity for students in engineering. Siemens is a multinational company based out of
Germany, employing more than 37,000 people across 190 nations. With Penn State and
Siemens entering a strategic alliance, the number one electronics seller globally decided
to take full advantage of their new endeavor.
The company asked Penn State students to treat the campus as a
small city, with the main goal being sustainability. They asked groups
to model our concept designs or redesigns of existing elements of
their "Sustainable Cities" initiative. It was expressed that Siemens
planned to choose at least two ideas for real world implementation.
Minimal restrictions were placed on where groups could take
this project. The open ended task at hand only required that teams show how coupling
environmentally friendly technology with human behavior is the gateway to creating a
sustainable future. Sustainability means the ability to allow populations to meet the
demands of current generations while not negatively effecting future generations.
There were many opportunities to explore in terms of increasing the sustainability
of Penn State:

Energy

Water management

Transportation

Heating
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Problem Statement
A common issue at Penn State is inefficient transportation. Whether it is car
traffic or over-crowded buses, it is evident that the campus is begging for a solution. Our
team realized that this is not only a problem, but also an opportunity for the school to
implement more efficient forms of campus travel while remaining sustainable.
Concept of Operation
Our team sought out to address the problem transportation about the Penn State
campus and local area in order to accommodate the student in an environmentally
sustainable fashion. The overall goal of this entire project is to be sustainable; to reach
this goal the system must meet several criteria:

Economically feasibility- providing at least a profit in the long run

Socially appropriate- enticing enough for the students to actually partake
in the system implemented

Environmentally friendly- causing as minimal waste as possible and
discouraging the use of fossil fuels.
We seek to do all of this by implementing a system to change the way students travel.
Gathering Information
To create specifications that the project must possess we had to gather
information from people which our project will be impacting. The research we conducted
was partly done through an internet-based survey sent out to various students at Penn
State (Appendix: Figure 1). The results showed a resounding need for an inexpensive
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form of transportation that will also provide a level of convenience for the student body.
For the system to be maximally utilized, it must be accessible by students and staff for a
minimum cost and must encourage both environmentally sustainable and physically
active behavior.
Our group then reached out to other various resources to gather data from
stakeholders. People that were reached out to and questioned were Penn State Students,
Penn State staff, Centre County, and the Siemens Corporation. Also, our group contacted
Penn State Bike Share who works in conjunction with Penn State staff, attempting to
address campus transportation inefficiency issues. We assessed the Siemens customer
statements page and question and answer forum to gather information regarding the
sponsoring company’s needs. Unfortunately due to time constraints, we could not get in
touch with Centre County despite our best efforts, leaving us to make inferences.
Specifications
We feel that in order for our project to be successful on the Penn State campus, it
must meet the specifications that we feel the students deemed the most crucial for a
system of this sort.
To be successful, the system should:

Not cost the customer over $50, due to the fact that the students will not
use the system if they feel it is not worth what they pay to utilize it

Be used by at least 2,000 students per year. To be utilized by enough
students, it must also be accessible in at least 5 different locations
throughout campus
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
Achieve an adequate level of safety, thus there should be less than one
serious accident a year.
Be deemed successful if its capital cost is paid for in a maximum of 5 years. The
need for maintenance on the system must only be utilized one time a year, to reduce cost
of upkeep. Another criterion for our design is to avoid interference with walking
pedestrians, thus it must not overlap with the current walkways.
Following the instantiation of the consumer needs in which our design should
follow, we constructed a pairwise comparison in order to establish which of these
characteristics held the greatest importance in regards to our project. (Appendix: Figure
2) From this chart, we deemed that the most important aspects were:
●
Affordability
●
Environmentally
●
Sustainable
●
Maintainable
●
Non-invasive for pedestrians
Schedule
In order for our team to remain on task throughout the course of our project we
created a Gantt chart that can be found attached as a PDF file.
Concept Development
Now that we had the information gathered from our various sources as well as the
specifications, constraints, and have developed concept maps (Figure 3 & 4) with which
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to design our project within, our team began to brainstorm ideas. Allowing even some
outlandish ideas, we brainstormed five different ideas that seemed to satisfy a few needs
presented by our stakeholders:
● Make the CATA buses solar-powered. We would
outfit all CATA busses which work on the Penn State
campus with solar panels in order to eliminate emissions and limit fuel needs of a
major transportation system at Penn State.
● Reward students for walking to class instead of taking a bus. We would track
how much students walk and provide them with gifts like coupons or School
Store credit when they hit certain landmarks.
● Create an on-campus bike rental system which is accessible by students through
their ID card. In general, the school can charge a low yearly fee for
students to have unlimited access to bike racks located throughout
campus. This will both eliminate some congestion on
sidewalks and has the potential to decrease the
number of fossil fuels consumed.
● Limit the number of cars on campus. By doing this, we are forcing people to
either use mass transport or walk; both of which are more sustainable and
decrease pollution and energy use at Penn State.
● Our fifth idea was to take down any parking structures on campus. This, like the
previous idea, would stop people from bringing cars into Penn State since there
would be such limited parking.
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We then proceeded to rigorously judge each of the ideas based on the specifications
using first a screening matrix, and then following with a weighted matrix. (Appendix:
Figure 5 & 6) From the screening matrix, we narrowed down the ideas that we felt met
most of the specifications laid out, actually eliminating one due to its negative score.
Then with the construction of the weighted matrix, the community bicycle system came
out on top, proving it to be the idea that most fully satisfied every constraint placed upon
it.
Detailed Concept Development
Additional research that was required for our solution included gathering
information regarding magnetic swipe readers, which will be used for checking the
bikes out. Another aspect of our design was analyzing how much each recycled
bicycle would cost to purchase for out bike share system. Due to the fact that each
bike varies in condition and cost, the range of prices average from 50 dollars to 100
dollars.
Next, one of the most important aspects is how many bicycles we should
implement with our system. With the help of a follow-up
survey (Figure 7) using more specific questions regarding
bike riding at Penn State, we deduced that about a 3rd of
participants would be willing to partake in the bike-share
system. Based on the given information, we will begin by using approximately 2000
bikes spread throughout the campus. Once the students become accustomed to this
new mode of transportation, the number of bikes utilized will increased, based on
the demand.
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An important source of information is to pragmatically use the
characteristics belonging to existing systems which appear to
be successful. One of these sources is the international company Bixi.
Bixi is a bike rental company that is used in many major cities, such as
Montreal, Ottawa, London, Toronto, Boston, and New York City and many more. We
were able to utilize the idea of a card-swiping mechanism. The major differentiation
between our company and Bixi is that they charge an insane amount of money to
rent a bike for only a short period of time through the day ($7/day). Whereas their
main goal is profit and growing their business, our main goal is to make Penn State
more sustainable. We estimate that the maximum amount of money we can charge
the student is about $1.00 a day, and offer a membership for $50 dollars to cover the
year.
A basic overview of how the entire transaction process would take place is
the student will walk up the checkout station and easily swipe their Penn State ID
card and type in the PIN# of the specific bicycle they desire. This will then release
the lock mechanism and allow the student to remove the bike from the rack. Each
bike has a lock attached to the frame, so there is no need to worry about chains or
anything of the sort being stolen. When returning the bicycle, students simply have
to roll the bike up to the rack and it will lock itself in place. Once locked, the rider
will have to type in the PIN# once again so as to inform the system that the bike has
been returned.
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In Conclusion
Now, a question you may be asking yourself is “why would I use this design?”
For starters, it was the simplest solution to a major problem here at Penn State: the
overuse of the CATA Bus system. As all good engineers will preach: K.I.S.S. This
stands for Keep It Simple Stupid, and that is exactly what we did. By creating a bikerental system where all you need to do is swipe your ID to get a bicycle, we have made it
quick and easy for the on-the-go student to find a fast mode of transportation. All you
need to know is: “Swipe, type, and go.”©
When it’s all said and done, this project turned out to be both eye-opening and
insightful to the vast amount of work an engineer must do to create an effective and highquality design. More specifically, the biggest thing we learned was that for every little
bit of actual design, there is a ton of planning. For our six week project, more than five
of those weeks were spent on planning out our design! The other big thing we learned
from this is that the presentation of an idea can be as important as the quality of the idea.
Several groups presented good ideas poorly, and it gave me a bad impression; whereas
other groups presented decent ideas well and made me consider them to be great.
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Appendix
Figure 1: Survey
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Figure 2: Pairwise Comparison
Figure 3: Follow up Survey
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Figure 4: Lion Bike Experience Mapping
Figure 5: Screening Matrix
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Figure 6: Weighted Matrix
Figure 7: Bicycle Lifecycle Mapping
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