Capstone Brief & Current-State Evidence

Choose a capstone that is small enough to prove completely and rich enough to integrate disciplines. Good examples include an instrumented clamp-and-inspect station, a variable-part pick fixture, a safe pallet-transfer concept, a low-energy sorting cell, or a simulated robot-assisted packaging process.

Do not build hazardous industrial machinery as an unsupervised home project. A simulation, digital prototype, cardboard/full-scale ergonomic mockup, or low-voltage low-energy demonstrator can prove engineering reasoning without exposing anyone to uncontrolled energy.

Write the brief

Include:

• current task and users;
• problem evidence and why it matters;
• system boundary and exclusions;
• product/process family and representative variation;
• stakeholders and decision authority;
• baseline time distribution, quality, WIP, exposure, workload, recovery, cost, energy, and space;
• constraints, assumptions, and unknowns;
• intended project artifacts and review gates.

MIT’s design courses treat notebooks, analysis, fabrication, experiments, and review as one learning system ¹. Your notebook is the trace of decisions: dated observations, alternatives, rejected ideas, calculations, tests, and changes.

Name the problem without embedding a purchase

Weak: “Install a collaborative robot.” Strong: “Reduce manual lifting above 12 kg and stabilize output at 30 good assemblies/hour across the defined family while preserving two-person changeover and safe recovery.”

Current-state evidence package

Create process map, spaghetti/motion view, task decomposition, time observations, defect and recovery log, hazard screen, photographs or diagrams of layout, information flow, and worker interviews. Protect privacy and obtain appropriate permission for real workplace data.

Gate 1

Pass when the need is evidenced, scope is bounded, representative cases exist, affected people are identified, and at least three non-automation improvements were considered. Stop if the problem disappears after simple process improvement.