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Marketing, Engineering Students Team Up to Develop Product
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“UMD students
cast rod into sea of opportunity”
TEAMWORK: Students from two UMD programs are working together to
develop a marketable rod for disabled anglers. Duluth News Tribune,
3/27/03, article by Steve Kuchera, News Tribune Staff Writer.
Cullen Boyd, a UMD senior in industrial engineering, holds the
controls of a prototype device designed to help physically disabled
anglers cast a fishing lure.
A group of University
of Minnesota Duluth students are going into business. In just one
semester, four engineering students are trying to develop a working
prototype of a mechanized fishing rod and reel that physically disabled
anglers can use.
Four marketing students
are working with them, doing extensive market and product research
and developing plans for selling the device, named HandiCast.
“It’s nice
to work on something that will bring value to society,” said
Mariia Kouznetsova, one of the Labovitz School of Business and Economics
students involved in the project.
This is the first time
students from different schools at UMD have worked together on such
a project. It may not be the last. If all goes well, the students
will work with UMD to create a company named “Limitless Opportunities,”
where future groups will either improve existing projects or design,
create and market new ones.
The whole idea is to
give students from marketing and from the College of Science and
Engineering a foretaste of the business world, where people from
different disciplines commonly work together on projects, said marketing
instructor John Kratz.
Students began this year
with a 2001 prototype rod and reel. The device – cobbled together
from a snoopy rode and reel, a couple of motors, a few gears and
switches and some wires and duct tape – was designed and built
by a previous group of UMD engineering students to allow a quadriplegic
person to accurately cast a fishing lure. In November 2001, it took
first place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers international
design competition.
The prototype had to
meet strict competition guidelines. That’s no longer the case.
“The engineering
students are free to alter it in any way to make a better piece
of equipment,” marketing student Chris Bremner said.
“We’re aiming
for a 20- to 35-meter casting range,” up from the few yards
required for the competition, engineering student Eric Hesse said.
“From the original
rod, we ordered larger motors and a longer casting rod,” engineering
senior Andrew Eldien said. “We’re also putting the whole
device on a rotating base.”
The students are refining
the controller, aiming for a 4-by-6-inch box similar to a video
game controller. Anglers will use the box to control the base’s
rotation, the drawback of the rod, the cast and the retrieval speed.
“I try not to get
too involved in the details,” said mechanical and industrial
engineering professor David A. Wyrick. “I let the students
do the design and then ask questions that make them think about
what’s going on.”
While the engineering
students are developing and refining HandiCast, the marketing students
are trying to determine whether people would buy it.
“Our whole goal
is to develop a comprehensive business plan and test the feasibility
of this product from all perspectives – cost, marketing, price,
distribution,” Kouznetsova said.
Toward that end, students
have talked to people who work with the disabled. They will present
the HandiCast idea at a conference next month.
They’re also researching
a possible patent for HandiCast, making sure they’re not infringing
on an existing product. An extensive search has found nothing similar,
Bremner said.
There have been some
problems along the way. During the first few weeks, the engineering
and marketing students didn’t understand each others’
jargon, said marketing senior Megan Vesaas.
“It’s been
a real learning experience for students and teachers because it’s
all new,” she said.
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