Title: Project Flowchart
Course: BTEC-2000-301-302-303-F21 > Section: InnovaBio® Research Project

Many fields and industries use flowcharts as visual representations of how an overall objective is accomplished. Typically, the flowchart is an overview and only briefly describes or references detailed instructions such as WIDs or protocols. Flowcharts use specific shapes to represent different types of actions or elements.

In science, flowcharts allow you to see how the experiments or steps relate to each other and how they lead to the final objective or product. In a flowchart, you may see an arrow connecting two processes. The direction of the arrow indicates the order of steps. In production and experimentation, the product of the first process is the input needed to complete the second process.  In some cases more than one experiment can be completed with the results of the first experiment.

For example, you may take a portion of the material for one step to check if the material is of good quality for subsequent steps. The same starting material is used in each experiment. In this case, the flowchart will have separate arrows pointing from one experiment to the quality check and the next step in the overall process.

In this example flowchart, the product of the mini-prep purification step is used in three separate subsequent steps. Three arrows point to the restriction digest, PCR, and BL21 transformation steps.

In manufacturing, a final product may be an assembly of several components. In this case, the arrows from the process to make each component lead to the final assembly process.

In this flowchart example, both branching and assembly steps are used.  Assembly requires three products from separate processes to assemble the tin box.  Near the bottom of the figure, arrows point from Punch, Press and Protruding steps to the Assembly step.

Learning Objectives:

- 2.4 Develop a flowchart demonstrating the process for a research project.