Twice a year, Simio holds an international competition in which teams of college students must model and analyze a system that Simio has provided. This year it was a “Seed Production” facility where corn is sorted, treated and packaged for crop use. According to Simio, the contest consisted of 300 teams that came from 35 schools across 15 countries. The all-female team known as the SimuLadies, consisting of ISE seniors Bailey Butler, Claire Mellot, Chelsea Nagy, and Ellen Wilson, placed third.
The team project was part of Richard Wysk‘s ISE 441 Introduction to Simulation Class. “We at NC State have participated in the student competition since it began about 10 years ago,” explained Wysk. This problem not only challenged their model-building skills, but creativity, project management, and even video production and presentation skills as well. As a reward, all students that take part in the competition receive a professional license for Simio software to use to create their large-scale models.
“Most of the models used in the competition are ‘real-world model variants,’ so the competition allows students to apply their class skills to actual problems,” said Wysk. It is important for students to not only have experience working on a problem from start to finish, but also on projects where the data and assumptions aren’t laid out for them by the instructors,” added Ph.D. student and class TA Katy Smith. “The way a project in the real world would be.”
What Does it Take to Win?
This project represents two to three weeks of work for students – a small amount of time to complete a project of this size. The students learn a lot about working as a team as three or four students take part in each group. Creativity, time-management, and strong technical skills are major components for success. “Proper time-management as well as distributing the right tasks to the right people are key factors,” said Smith. “The project is large and has many different components. Being hardworking and a good problem solver is also extremely important as many problems will arise during the modeling process.”
Their Winning Project
“We took a multidisciplinary approach to the problem,” said Chelsea Nagy. “We used the knowledge we had gained not only in our ISE 441 class, but in other ISE classes as well.” “We applied concepts from ISE 362 – Stochastic Models, ISE 408 – Control of Production and Service Systems, and ST 372 – Statistical Inference and Regression,” explained Bailey Butler. The team also used their own experiences from past internships and co-ops. “This wealth of information allowed us to take a unique approach when creating our solution,” said Butler.
What Did They Learn?
A common thread among team members was learning how to look at the problem as a whole, but then breaking it into smaller, more workable parts and move forward with small improvements at a time. “This project challenged me to continually focus on step-by-step improvements rather than trying to solve every aspect at once,” shared Ellen Wilson. They also improved their abilities to manage time and remain on task. “While some members were working on the Simio file, others were updating the to-do list, adding information to our project video, or writing our executive summary,” confided Butler.
“You are much more capable than you think you are,” shared Claire Mellott. “We wanted to build a working model. We never expected any award. We just did what we were capable of and it paid off.”
The ISE Department has had a run of successful projects in recent years at the Simio contest, including two teams that finished in the top seven percent in 2018 and a second place finish — the highest in NC State history — in 2017.