Papers- What?
Demos - Online Engineer's Design Notebook (OEDN)
Engineering Decision Support System (EDSS)
Concurrent Engineering Assessment (CEA)
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Research
Professor Ullman's career is focused on understanding, teaching and practicing mechanical
design. In order to understand design, he has spent the last fifteen years researching the design
process. To teach design, he has developed courses presented on campus and in the professional
community which focus on the process of design. To practice design he has developed products,
patented and marketed them. His goal is to practice what he preaches and understand both.
Profess or Ullman's research has centered on understanding how individual and teams solve design problems. This research has focused on the study of how different design methodologies support the design process and how to improve these methods. Further, research has included an effort to support sketch capture and decomposition to aid in the conceptual phase of design. These efforts have been investigated with other researchers from computer science, manufacturing engineering, business and psychology.
Current focus is on the support of decision making by teams of designers, developing metrics for assessing the design process and the use of Taguchi's methodsin the early stages of the design process and in decision making.
He is an active member of the research community. In 1986, reacting to a lack of mechanisms
for reporting on design research, he founded the ASME Design Theory and Methodology
Committee.
Teaching
Professor Ullman is responsible for four major courses taught annually, a short course and is developing a new course.
In ME 382, a course taken at the beginning of the 3rd year, students are introduced to the design process and techniques to support it. In this class, three person student teams, solve the same ill-defined problem. By the end of the ten week course they develop a product and an appreciation for the design process. The culmination of the course is a design contest held the last week to find which teams have been most successful in solving the design problem. Often the problem is based on the ASME student design competition, which OSU students have won. This course has led to the text The Mechanical Design Process, McGraw Hill, 1992, currently in use at over 20 Universities. A second edition will be available in early 1997.
ME 383, the second required course in design is based on the dissection of an existing product and understanding the flow of energy, information and materials through it. This requires study of forces and power flow, stress and strain, failure theories and the basics of common machine components.
ENGR 415/416, an elective course co-developed with faculty from the Business College and Manufacturing Engineering, combines the engineering and business aspects of new product development. In this two-term course, engineering and business students form teams to concurrently develop new products and new businesses. The results of the classes are a product prototype and a complete business plan.
ME 518, a graduate course in concurrent engineering has been developed and presented at OSU and by video link to the Portland area and to Boeing in Seattle. This course is the outgrowth of a short course formerly offered through ASME.
A new course is being developed on Taguchi's method for the design of robust products.
Practice
Beyond his academic experience, Professor Ullman has industrial experience in the design of
fluid/thermal, control and transportation systems. He is an active mechanical designer with two
products currently on the market. He is a professional engineer registered in two states.
Additionally, he has consulted on CAD and the design process with Schlumberger, HP, Mentor
Graphics, Tektronics, SDRC and others.
In 1993 he was co-founder of BikeE Corporation, producer of semi-recumbent bicycles. He was
co-designer of the original product and is currently active in designing new products. BikeE
products are sold nationwide and are considered to be a new advance in bicycling comfort.
