Conclusions highlight the main findings of your efforts. Note that this section is not a summary of your work. Such a summary is included in the Executive Summary section. Here, you will briefly highlight the main conclusive findings related to how well the results met the engineering requirements (engineering constraints and objectives) and/or FAILED to do so.
Almost all teams will have a conclusion in regard to projected production cost, projected replication cost, or projected refinement and implementation cost; this is NOT the project or prototyping cost. If you have designed a “product” that is intended for eventual production, you would state your projected production cost per unit and the quantity of units produced per period (and what is the length of that period, e.g., month, quarter, year) that leads to that production cost. If you have designed a “product” that is to be replicated just a small number of times by your customer for their own use, you would state your projected replication cost per unit and the quantity at which that cost was determined. If you have designed a process or a one-off that will still need some refinements to take it from alpha/beta status to implementation readiness, you would state your projected refinement and implementation cost.
Continue with your other conclusions, in order from your strongest, most meaningful one down to your least strong and/or meaningful one. There is no need to have many conclusions, so don’t “make them up.” Also, note that conclusions are not summary items; they are what you have concluded as a result of your work. This section may be very short; that is fine, make it meaningful, not fluff and length.
| © 2017, William J. Endres | Updated March 21, 2022 |
