Industrial Engineering Senior Capstone Experience

• U of A
• Industrial Engineering
• News
• Industrial Engineering Senior Capstone Experience

 

The Industrial Engineering Capstone Experience is a two-semester course in which students are assigned in teams of 4-5. They are then matched with an industrial partner in mid-October. Each team is led by a student project manager and advised by a member of the industrial engineering faculty. The industry partner provides the team with a point of contact and meets with the team (in-person or virtually) at least once per week to help the team identify and meet stakeholders, obtain data, assess the validity of their industrial engineering analysis, and review draft versions of course milestones and project results.

During the second eight weeks of the fall semester, each team gets to know their industry partner by conducting stakeholder analysis and background research on their sponsor and the issues that are of interest to the sponsor. This background research includes reviews of published work on how other organizations have addressed similar issues. The goal for this preliminary analysis is to require teams to utilize a variety of industrial engineering tools including extensive data analysis and visualization. By the end of the fall semester, each team defines meaningful objectives for their work with their sponsor. They also define the performance measures that they will use to measure their success in achieving these objectives, as well as the results they will provide to the sponsor upon completion of their project. The intent is that these results will facilitate the implementation of recommendations and ongoing decision support.

In spring semester, each team completes the tasks required to achieve their project objectives. Completing these tasks require teams to apply a wide variety of industrial engineering tools including data analysis, mathematical and/or computer modeling, and cost and/or financial analysis. Each team uses their performance measures to assess their success in achieving their project objectives. They also create their project deliverables as well as the documentation necessary for their sponsor to properly utilize these results. The experience concludes with an all-day Industrial Engineering Capstone Symposium. At the symposium, student teams participate in an interactive poster session and deliver detailed technical presentations about their projects.

 

First International Capstone Project

In partnership with Walmart International, a group of four Industrial Engineering students traveled to Mexico City to participate in the first ever international capstone  project. The scope of the project was to help define routines and standard operating procedures for job roles in Sam’s Club stores in Mexico. The students had the opportunity to apply learnings from their coursework to a global project and gain professional experience in the process. Through leveraging their knowledge, they gained insight into the international operations of the world’s largest retailer while simultaneously delivering value to the organization.

The students created a video to share their incredible experience in Mexico. The video includes a short introduction on the project followed by a picture slideshow.

 

Award-Winning Teams Compete at Capstone Conference

Each year engineering students from around the country gather at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York to test their engineering skills against the best undergraduate system engineers in the nation at the prestigious General Donald R. Keith Memorial Capstone Conference. Two teams of University of Arkansas industrial engineering students were among the more than 60 teams competing at the conference held April 2016.

The conference is a student-focused forum for applied research in Systems Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Engineering Management, and Operations Research. Six schools provided teams in eight tracks. Each track had three judges from industry, government and academia.

Taking home first place were seniors Tyler Beneke, Tori McDaniel, Alexa Koenigseder and Lacey Burnett. In their project with the Veterans Healthcare System of the Ozarks, they worked with the Inventory Management team to create a new standardized item location system and count, error tracking and reporting tool. They represented the University of Arkansas in the Process Modeling and Analysis track at the conference. “Competing against five other teams was a fabulous and humbling experience,” said senior Tyler Beneke.

The other team of seniors, Zach Watts, Michael Herm, Curtis Casey and Blake McMillon, placed second in the Systems Optimization track. Their project involved improving truck routing for a Fortune 500 transportation company.  The team created a Visual Basic application that generated a solution for the vehicle routing problem. Using data provided by the sponsor company, their program generated several improvements to the existing routing process that the company could potentially implement, resulting in significant cost savings.

Through this and other relationships with various companies, industrial engineering students are now able to gain experience through internships, co-ops, and, most recently, international capstone projects.