Past Senior Design Projects | 2015 | NC State ISE

Caterpillar
Student Team: Daniel King, Adam Rafalowski, Anna Renfro, Blake Rosier

Caterpillar plans to increase its production in its Sanford location by 17% per week. They discovered that the method for creating the weekly build schedule is inefficient. It currently takes 190 minutes to create the schedule in Excel. The ISE student team will create an automated scheduling tool using VBA and form controls. The tool will seek to reduce the scheduler’s processing time by 95%.

EMC²
Student Team: Adam Betzwieser, Seth Bryan, Roy Millberg, Jace Weddington

EMC² orders raw materials from overseas that can arrive well before they are needed for production. They store these materials in an off-site storage facility. EMC estimates that they recycle 30 tons of packaging materials per month. The ISE student team plans to reduce the amount of waste in the packaging operations at EMC’s Apex facility. At the same time, they look to reduce the cost of packaging materials.

Flanders
Student Team: Matthew Billings. Taoufik Falsy, Kayla Summer, Christopher Turner

Flanders produces almost half a million air filters per year. They currently buy the filter’s metal frame, called a header, from an outside supplier. Flanders estimates they can save $500,000 a year by installing an in-house production line. The ISE student team plans to determine which sizes are viable for in-house production. Their goal is to develop the layout, workflow, material handling, and storage for the new production line.

Lenovo
Student Team: Rachel Gibson, Brian Linn, Nathan Mauney, Addison Warden

The Lenovo distribution center has plans to take on more responsibilities. The current layout of the Customer Solution Center (CSC) is taking up too much space and has become inefficient as the facility’s demands have increased. The ISE student team plans to create a flexible work area to accommodate for fluctuating demand. Their goal is to reduce the footprint of the CSC work area by at least 10% as well as increase capacity by 20%.

Novozymes
Student Team: Ryan Bishop, Thomas Martin, Tim Moody, Christopher Sippel

Novozymes has three production lines. One uses newer technologies that can operate at a faster and cheaper rate. They currently use a deterministic calculation to compute various production scenarios. This process has many steps that are stochastic in nature which makes their calculation risky. The ISE Student team plans to create a simulation model to capture the random nature of the process to deliver key statistics.

Trivantage
Student Team: Tyler Melvin, Rachel Oneyear, Kristin Teague, Paul Whitley

Trivantage’s current packaging and shipping are inefficient and do not factor in the variety of orders. They want to streamline to process and increase their profit margin by 30%. The ISE student team has three solutions to the problem. They plan to change the multiple branch shipment logic, standardize the logic in choosing box size and review Trivantage’s discount freight program.

Trivantage
Student Team: Jonathan Addison, Zach Bouren, Charles Copeland, Cam Simmons

Trivantage’s current return rate for orders is above the industry average of 1%. They want to reduce their return rate to less than 1% which reduces costs and improves their customer satisfaction. The ISE student team plans to use multivariate analysis to discover trends in Trivantage’s return data. They want to find the underlying reasons for the high quantity problems, then develop solutions to solve these problems.

AKG Thermal Systems
Student Team: Rachel Black, George Korn, Emily Peeler, Samuel Wurst

AKG Thermal Systems wanted to implement a continuous improvement plan as well as lean manufacturing principles to support their growth and need for increased order fulfillment capacity. Specifically, they wanted to reduce the time of the scheduling and assembly processes. The ISE student team created an automated program that prioritized orders and improved the overall assembly and shipping process.

Big Rock Sports
Student Team: Charles Clayton, Chris Dodds, Nick Lepore, Pat Nager

Head Quarters Taxidermy Supply (Big Rock Sports) needed to improve their current process for manufacturing Habitat materials to meet the growing demand. The ISE student team created a more efficient process to allow HQ to mass-produce Habitat materials by designing a new floor layout, applied 5S and created a shop floor control system.

Big Rock Sports
Student Team: Justin Ferguson, Zach Little, Jonathan Page, Kyle Trainor

At Big Rock Sports, orders are comprised of different products made in multiple cells. Once an item is finished in its cell and boxed, it is sent to the merge area to wait for the rest of the items in the order. Some items can wait for days in the merge area for the rest of the items to be completed. The ISE Student team created a schedule for each item in an order to be started so the entire order will arrive in the merge area at the same time, thus reducing the number of time orders spend in the merge area.

Cummins
Student Team: David Goyer, Hannah Leskovec, William Nifong, Christian Peterson

At Cummins, Inc., engines must be properly closed off to any water before being washed. If water gets into the engine, it is considered defective and must be reworked. Currently, the task of closing off engines to any water is handled by the operator. The ISE student team created a robust, systematic way to identify to the operator which caps are needed for each engine as they come through the Pre-Wash station. The system eliminated the trial and error method for determining the appropriate masking.

Cummins
Student Team: James Beall, Kevin Gahagan, Jerel Jordan, Ethan Miller

At Cummins, Inc., the process for masking an engine in the pre-paint station is not standardized and is performed, by memory, by the operator. Combine this with the fact that there are no quality control systems to ensure the maskings are correct and all to often the results are customer disapproval and loss of profits. The ISE student team created a system or framework to provide error proofing and a standard means of masking engines.

EMC²
Student Team: John Hajnos, Alexander Hodge, Mark Trongdon

At EMC², orders are comprised of different products made in multiple cells. Once an item is finished in its cell and boxed, it is sent to the merge area to wait for the rest of the items in the order. Some items can wait for days in the merge area for the rest of the items to be completed. The ISE student team created a schedule for each item in an order to be started so the entire order will arrive in the merge area at the same time.

EMC²
Student Team: Kristin Gavin, Ismail Lekorchi, Noah Linger, Alex White

EMC² has decided to create its own stinger tools because current stingers have a 12-week lead time to order. This problem has reached the point at which the company may miss shipment goals and management wants to ensure this does not occur in the future. The ISE student team created a program to forecast the number of stingers needed one, two or multiple quarters out.

Flanders
Student Team: Charles Klecker, Malcolm Stephen, Andrew Wenk

Flanders is currently transitioning from a hot glue to a cold glue lamination process. Because of the cost savings, Flanders will be adding more cold glue lamination machines into its facility to meet the high demand. Flanders wants to standardize its entire lamination process, from raw materials to the location of the finished rolls. To accomplish this, the ISE student team studied the current inventory flow and operating procedures in order to increase productivity to meet the high demand.