Critical Analysis Of Conceptual Design Phase Of A Systems Engineering Project

Write a report which critically analyses the conceptual design phase of a systems engineering project. Projects might include designing a bridge, a dam, an environmentally-conscious building or a mechatronic system. You might not have been involved in the project personally, but some connection with the project would make the analysis more meaningful.

Choose your project carefully because in assignment 2, your group will need to analyse the preliminary design and detailed design phases of the project. If you are unsure as to whether your chosen project has sufficient depth/detail, consult with your tutor. You will also have the opportunity to work on the assignment in the tutorials for the unit. Every group must do a different project. Also, projects from previous years can not be reused. 

The report is to analyse the following phases of the project: 

• Needs definition

• Conceptual system design

To demonstrate your research skills and understanding, the report must draw upon relevant sources like journals, books or reputable trade publications in analysing the project. You must also present the case study in terms of the above two lifecycle phases and evaluate the proposed conceptual design against the identified needs / requirements. 

Needs definition

This assessment paper requires an analysis of the design process of a smart trolley to be used in supermarkets by basically focusing on its conceptual design phase of the smart trolley. The conceptual design of the smart trolley to be used is supermarkets primarily consider the needs definition of the smart trolley, support concept and its maintenance, feasibility study, performance measurement, system operation requirements, functional analysis, system planning, as well as its design process. The major disadvantages of the traditional trolley that led to the development of the smart trolley system are that in the traditional trolley, customers have to stand in queue for a longer duration depending on the number of people purchasing, and it increase material handling compared to the smart trolley.

The customers will have the capability of performing numerous tasks included in the primary functionality of the touchscreen tablet such as daily deals, self-scanning prices and search for products sold in the supermarket or hypermarket. The smart trolley will help in solving some of the problems associated with the traditional trolley such as difficulty to find out daily deals, long waiting time, wastage of time when searching for product prices, and frustrations (Barker, 2014).

The major reason for the establishment of innovation is ought for more independence and this leads to improvement in tasks and making common tasks to be speedier and simpler. A shopping centre is a place where people visit to get their daily needs running from electrical appliances, garments, items, and foodstuffs. Customers normal purchase the products that they require and then place them in a cart before moving towards the counter for the purposes of payment of bills. In numerous cities and towns, there is usually a huge rush at shopping malls and supermarkets, especially on weekends and holidays. This sometimes can be more serious in case there are huge discounts and offers (Beiser, 2009).

Currently, people purchase numerous items and put them in the trolley while waiting in queues to be served. The cashier prepares the bill for the use of the barcode which is a time-consuming process especially in case the size of the queue is long. This will automatically result in long queues at the billing counters. This paper analyzes the design process of the smart trolley which will provide a solution to the above problems by evaluating the operational requirements, feasibility study, performance measurement, design process, functional analysis, and system planning of the smart trolley (Cheek, 2012).

Conceptual design

The conceptual design of the smart trolley to be used is supermarkets primarily consider the needs definition of the smart trolley, support concept and its maintenance, feasibility study, performance measurement, system operation requirements, functional analysis, system planning, as well as its design process of the smart trolley. The aim of this design process is to implements a smart cart with the assistance of a Point on Sale (POS) system and scanners for improving the purchasing process. This plan is to incorporate the POS system related surveillance implementation practice in the purchasing trolley which will be individually operated by the customer (Company, 2011).

If a commodity is placed inside the trolley, the price of the product is indicated on the POS system and the accumulative amount will also be indicated accordingly. In case the customer wishes to remove any product, the amount of that particular products will be eliminated from the accumulative amount. This system is meant to improve the security performance of the shopping malls and ensure faster purchasing by customers (Karmakar, 2012).

The smart trolley will need to be good and flexible to encourage the clients who own shopping malls to acquire and use the product. The first question that the designer should answer before beginning the process of designing is ‘where will be the trolley placed, who are the users, and how will be the trolley operated?’ Some of the facts that should be known before the process of designing commences are that there will be need of power supply for all devices attached, after shopping the POS system should send receipt, the trolley should have four wheels, steering or handle, and wheels, the smart device should connect or link with the database of the store for product search, the POS system should be easy to use and user friendly, the system should be fitted with barcode scanner, the system should only accept card payment, and the system should be easy to move around (Karray, 2010). The block diagram below shows the proposed design components of the smart trolley:

                                    Figure 1: Proposed block diagram of smart trolley design (Leng, 2014)

The Database connection is the process by which the client software communicate with the database server, this is made possible by the incorporating a software which will enable sending and receiving of information from the database server. The type of Point of Sale system that will be employed in the design of smart trolley system shall be the Radio Frequency Identification tag (RFID). The implementation of the RFID technology will improve the purchasing process together with its surveillance implementation practice (Marshall, 2013).

Feasibility Study

The major components that would be required during the design process of a smart trolley include RFID reader, barcode scanner, power supply, LED display, PIC microcontroller, and a buzzer. When an item is placed inside the smart trolley, the first component that will detect its presence is the sensor after which the barcode scanner which is located at a strategic point in the trolley self-scan the barcode of the product purchased. The RFID reader which is a wireless transmission smart-device makes not of all the items scanned in a particular trolley and then link with the database server of the supermarket. The information gotten from the server will show the customer some of the physical descriptions of the product scanned by displaying the information on the LED display. The product scrutinized are billed automatically in the RIFD system which contains a physical description and other features of the product such as cost price, name, and maybe the manufacturing company (McFarland, 2012).

The major functional blocks of the smart trolley system include RFID reader, barcode scanner, power supply, LED display, PIC microcontroller, and a buzzer. The radio frequency identification (RFID) has an operating frequency of 125 kHz and uses radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag for the purposes of tracking and identification. The RFID is a programme information and identification oriented innovation which is made of three components namely middleware which extends the RFID equipment and applications undertaken, a reader which radiates radio flags and attains replies consequently from labels, and lastly, a tag shaped chip possessing a receiving wire (Middleton, 2013). The figure below shows the flowchart of the proposed smart trolley design:

                              Figure 2: Flowchart of the proposed smart trolley design (Middleton, 2013)

The buzzer is used for the purposes of indicating the invalid access. The buzzer is connected to the output of the PID microcontroller and it makes a buzzing noise and its major use for signalling that an invalid access has been detected. The keypad contains a set of arranged buttons in a pad or block which bears alphabetic letters, symbols, and digits. The power supply will be majorly a 230V, 50Hz mains stepped down using a transformer to generate the secondary output of 12V, 500mA. The transformer output is rectified by the use of a bridge rectifier composed of four diodes. The resultant power supplied would be 5V after being filtered by the capacitor and supplied to the LM7805 voltage regulator (Rani, 2013).

System Planning

The LCD display is a flat display which is used to display the description of the item or list of items selected by indicating the price and name of the product selected. The scanner is well equipped with an NFC technology which enables the generation of the electromagnetic field for both receivers and transmitter and also enables the detection between barcode and scanner registered by conveying information to shopping mall database and its automatic display on the LED display. The scanner is also equipped with a system that enables customers to remove the items that have already been scanned without any difficulty (Rani, 2013).

The system operational requirements of the smart trolley consist of four major components namely wireless communication, database, software, and hardware. The system includes a PIC microcontroller, LCD, barcode scanner, wireless card, and RFID system. Every customer is supposed to be identified by a particular ID of the trolley he or she picks at the entrance of the shopping mall. The base station at the payment counter is composed of a database which stores information concerning all the products stocked by the shopping mall, and also a barcode scanner to communicate with all other smart trolleys. When a customer starts shopping, he or she can scan the barcode of the item picked with the barcode scanner present in the smart trolley, after which the item can be placed inside the trolley (Silva, 2011).

The data from the barcode reader will be conveyed PID microcontroller which relays the data with the database to calculate the bill. The calculated bill is then displayed on the LEC display for the customer. This billing information can then be sent to the servers of the shopping mall and the mobile phone of the customer and the customer can then pay the bill using the smartcard. The movement of the trolley is made possible by the DC motor which is also connected to the power supply. The barcode of the product scanners by the barcode scanner is transmitted wirelessly to the base station using the RFID system which acts as a Point of Sale system. The RFID system is the recommended transmitter since they are produced in mass production and are easily available. However, any other short distance radio system such as ZigBee Protocol transmitted over the ZigBee network. In response, the base station sends relevant information regarding the product, which is used in the process of decision-making by the smart trolley system. After the customer finishes shopping, he or she can then proceed to the payment counter to pay the bill amount displayed in the LED display (Stair, 2017).

Functional Analysis

When the system was tested with a single shopping cart and a base station, it showed the correct results for all the instances except for the case when the conditions of lighting are very poor especially when the conditions of lighting is the environment is very dark or dim. This is because the image of the object cannot be identified due to the darkness. The lighting of the shopping mall is expected to be bright. It was also observed that a lot of time is taken for the entire process compared to the distance of the smart cart from the base station. The processing duration is the taken by the smart pulley to generate a time and decision for the wireless communication between the smart trolley and base station (Wolter, 2011).

This variation in the time response is major as a result the duration taken for the wireless communication since the duration taken in the decision-making at the smart pulley is constant every time. The impact of numerous users operating the smart trolley during their shopping expedition at the same time and also the issues of the spectrum coexistence should be analyzed since the system proposed uses approximately 2.4 GHz spectrum (Yodice, 2012).

The maintenance of the smart trolley system is supposed to be performed on the database, software, and hardware. Some of the components used in the design of smart trolley have a shorter lifespan and will need to be constantly replaced with new once before the system fails. Such components include the power source, sensors, the buzzer, and the LED display. The status of the DC motor should be frequently investigated to ensure that the movement of the wheels is enhanced (Zhang, 2016).

Conclusion:

This assessment paper requires an analysis of the design process of a smart trolley to be used in supermarkets by basically focusing on its conceptual design phase of the smart trolley. The customers will have the capability of performing numerous tasks included in the primary functionality of the touchscreen tablet such as daily deals, self-scanning prices and search for products sold in the supermarket or hypermarket. The product scrutinized are billed automatically in the RIFD system which contains the physical description and other features of the product such as cost price, name, and maybe the manufacturing company. The major components that would be required during the design process of a smart trolley include RFID reader, barcode scanner, power supply, LED display, PIC microcontroller, and a buzzer.

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