Team’s Status Report for 03/22

Significant Risks & Mitigation Strategies

Potential Risks:

1. Material Delays: The arrival of the acrylic sheets is critical for completing the assembly of the model house. Any delays could push back integration.

   • Mitigation: The order was placed early this week, about two weeks before the interim demo to allow enough time for laser cutting and assembly.

Contingency Plan: If the acrylic sheets do not arrive on time, we will use tape to secure the wiring and move forward with integrating the electronics.

2.

Risk: Optimization does not accurately reflect the assigned priority levels of individual devices, leading to suboptimal or unfair load scheduling.

Mitigation:

• Integrate device priority directly into the optimization objective and constraints as weighted penalties or scheduling preferences.

• Validate post-optimization results by checking if higher-priority devices are scheduled within their preferred windows or receive preferential treatment.

• Implement unit tests to ensure the priority values are parsed and utilized correctly in the solver.

---

Design Changes & Justification

1. Change: Slight modifications to the DXF files were made to improve the fit between the basswood and acrylic layers. I have also decided to not place acrylic sheets over the wooden floors. This reduces materials, lowers cost, and removes unnecessary complexity with laser cutting.

• Reason for Change: Initial design testing revealed minor misalignments in slots for acrylic insertion. Adjusting the DXF ensures a more precise assembly.

• Costs Incurred: Additional time spent in CAD revision and verification.

• Mitigation Strategy: These changes were made early enough, before laser cutting the wood and ordering the acrylic, that they do not impact the schedule. The updated files are ready for cutting as soon as materials arrive.