MAI-SJTU Students Defended Projects on Requirements Management in Aircraft Design

On December 17, 2019, a group of Russian and Chinese students studying Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) at the Master's degree program between Moscow Aviation Institute and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) defended their semester projects. 

The engineer’s activities in the product lifecycle management are in many ways similar to project management, which is why a rather major part of the program has been dedicated to the project studies at the MAI-SJTU joint institute. As part of the “Requirements management in Aircraft Design” course, students were given hours for joint project activities in aerospace field, the solutions for which they had presented at the end of the semester.

22 students (7 Russians and 15 Chinese) of the PLM program were divided into project groups so that each team had an equal student ratio. 

4 innovative topics were discussed:

• Development of a jetpack design.

• Development of a strategy to create a transcontinental company that sells airplanes to airlines for flight hours using the experience of AirSharing company.

• Delivery of goods and mail within the city and between cities using drones.

• Space tourism.

Students' projects were evaluated by an examination committee, which included Irina Polovina, Leading Specialist of MAI Directorate of Advanced Scientific Programs, Alexander Khvan, Project Manager for International Cooperation of MAI Directorate of Advanced Scientific Programs, Assistant of the Department 101 “Design and Certification of Aviation Equipment”, and Veniamin Brykin, Engineer of MAI 3D printing laboratory.

Graduate students developed their projects within two months, each team was given general and specific tasks. For example, the jetpack development team needed to design a layout with a general view and specification for their rocket pack. The group that chose the topic Space Tourism needed to develop a draft concept of infrastructure and regulatory documentation for space tourism.

All tasks were aimed at developing project management competencies for mastering the requirements management course. These skills are needed at the very early stages of product creation in order to lay down the requirements for the product being developed in such a way that at the end these requirements can not only be verified, but also confirmed using field or preliminary tests.

All students successfully defended their projects, which were highly appreciated by the examination committee.

Through such project trainings, Russian and Chinese students of the MAI-SJTU joint master's degree program learn to work in international groups and gain experience that they will use in cooperation on the wide-body long-range aircraft CR929 project.