Past Senior Design Projects | 2021 | NC State ISE
Past Senior Design Projects | 2021
Each semester we have the pleasure of working with local companies on projects as part of our Senior Design Program. These projects are an opportunity for companies to use student resources to have new concepts and fresh ideas injected into their real-world projects. This sponsorship is rewarding for both the project sponsor and the student team. We would like to thank all our past sponsors for their participation in the program.
Fall 2021 | Photo Gallery
Becton Dickinson
Student Team: Jacob Herring, Elijah Presnell and John Stewart
The Becton Dickinson Distribution Center in the RTP took over all North American returns and needed to implement a new warehouse management system to improve its throughput. The senior design team used simulation and time studies to create a predictive model to determine the system’s optimal cycle times and throughput. The team also created a new process flow diagram for training new operators.
Bosch
Student Team: Rob Butler, Chris Caruso and Kyle Margeson
In Bosch’s New Bern location, one of its oven cavity cells experienced severe bottlenecking, ergonomic issues and a high operator turnover rate due to its strenuous operating conditions. The senior design used data from its time study to re-design the build process and proposed five headcount balances, each a production forecast. They also made equipment recommendations to aid the new build process and improve operator working conditions.
Electric Power Research Institute
Student Team: George Haire, Lindsay Kelly and Rithika Shivkumar
Electric Power Research Institute produced heavily generalized inventory management publications for its member power plants that were challenging to execute on-site. With the plant managers’ help, the student team created inventory models that calculated the optimal inventory levels for all parts in the power plants. The model included an easy-to-use VBA form and an excel version. The team also created a comprehensive, qualitative best practices manual and instruction for using and replicating the model.
GSK
Student Team: Isaac Caldwell, Conrad McCoy and Francisco Ortiz
GlaxoSmithKline wanted to optimize a manufacturing line’s staffing levels and equipment effectiveness in their Zebulon facility. The senior design team collected months of data and used it to create a simulation model of the line. This model determined an optimal staffing level and recommended equipment and batch sizes. The results were reduced labor costs and an improved return on investment of the line.
Spoonflower
Student Team: Madison Lang, Maria Mackie and Mengyang Wei
Spoonflower’s wallpaper division has expanded in recent years and needed more work in progress (WIP) cubby space. During its busy seasons, the cubby system would overflow. The student team revised the WIP cubbies to hold more orders in the same area by analyzing cubby usage and order sizes. By redistributing the cubbies’ locations and updating the labeling system, They reduced the time needed to store and retrieve orders and adapt to future expansion needs.
“I want to say ‘thank you and well done’ on your senior design project for Toshiba. Your contributions provided valuable insights for us, which we will take forward in our future designs and system test cases.”
Vinessia Fisher Hankins
Toshiba Project Sponsor
Toshiba
Student Team: Katie Lawson, Casey Olson and Karan Sagi
Manhattan Associates wanted to improve client satisfaction and performance of its trucking supply chain division. They needed a tool that was compatible with its Profit Analyzer Tool and would reduce the time spent on cost model creation and maintenance process by 15 percent.
Using Microsoft Excel, the student team built a template with five built-in VBA macros that automated the cost modeling process. They reduced the cost model initialization time by more than 50 hours and the monthly maintenance time by more than five hours per week. Their efforts led to a 25 percent time reduction and $50k in potential new client income.
US Army
Student Team: Daniel Gigliotti, Brayden Gisler and Ryan Precaut
The US Army wanted to improve its large water purification units to increase mission readiness and ensure clean water for its soldiers. By researching new technologies, new training methods and alternative ways to service the current systems, the student team was able to find actionable routes for the Army to pursue in further stages of this multi-year project.
US Navy
Student Team: Nicole Colberg, Eric Swanson and Liya Thomas
The US Navy wanted to improve communications between its learning centers and personnel. The senior design team developed a dashboard to help provide accurate information to personnel quickly and efficiently. They also included a text message automation system to further enhance communications between its personnel and schools.
Spring 2021 | Photo Gallery
Advance Auto Parts
Student Team: Sidney Allen, Rebecca Rowen, Rachel Sykes, Gabrielle Tonsay and Nathan Woelfel
Advance Auto Parts wanted to improve its marketing efforts towards its commercial customers and optimize its inventory management.
The senior design team analyzed four years of customer data to determine any buying patterns. Once the data was cleaned, they discovered seasonal buying patterns across all matches. They placed the vast majority of the customers into eight pervading clusters, improving customer relations, decreasing inventory costs, and increasing revenue.
Biogen
Student Team: Maks Bezruchko, Jackson Holt, Nicole Quesinberry, David Rowland and Christine Wilkins
Biogen wanted to determine the feasibility of using an alternative supplier for critical filling line parts to save time and money in the event of a part failure.
The student team researched local suppliers to find the one best-equipped to help determine the feasibility of part replication. Working with a new supplier, the team quantified and demonstrated how a new supplier could replicate the parts.
Bosch
Student Team: Warren Babb, Alissa Boggs, Jake Castelino, Sarah Gerkin and Rupen Singer
The Bosch Dish Care manufacturing facility in New Bern, NC, wanted to reduce its high vehicle traffic caused by material demands and delivery cycle times.
The student team analyzed the current schedule and created a simulation model to determine the optimal program based on the decision matrix, which reduced each vehicle’s time in the system.
City of Raleigh – A
Student Team: Rana Farawi, Connie Feinberg, Tess Garrison, Matthew McMillan and Samantha Nagle
The City of Raleigh added License Plate Recognition Software (LPR) to its parking enforcement operations. But, it lacked the procedures for the drivers of its LPR-equipped vehicles to maximize their LPR usage.
The senior design team created dynamic routes to optimize parking enforcement around NC State University and Downtown Raleigh. The team also streamlined communications between the department and the LPR technology provider, Genetec, to significantly improve the enforcement process. Lastly, the team made recommendations on how to measure and incentivize driver performance.
City of Raleigh – B
Student Team: Jessica Berlin, Hannah Koszegi, Katja Mansdoerfer and Connor Patterson
The City of Raleigh wanted to add new stations to its Citrix Cycle Bikeshare Program in two feasibility-studied areas, Five Points and Mission Valley. But, it lacked a tool to select locations for the new bike-sharing stations in those areas, which wastes time spent on the station siting process.
The senior design team created a dynamic decision matrix that incorporated data from various sources to produce the optimal station locations in the predetermined areas. City planners can reuse this tool in the future to increase the process’s efficiency.
John Deere
Student Team: Troy Bowman, Tiger Kaovilai, Andrew Martin, Ryan Winz and Tina Yang
John Deere wanted to improve its data collection and analysis process to determine safe lifting standards and protect workers from musculoskeletal injuries.
The senior design team researched possible solutions and decided a web-based ergonomics assistance app was the best option. They also made recommendations for future improvements to the software and process itself.
Manhattan Associates
Student Team: Daniel Cockson, Emily Cooke, Rahul Dhawan, Matt Izzo, Anthony Szanfranski
Manhattan Associates wanted to improve client satisfaction and performance of its trucking supply chain division. They needed a tool that was compatible with its Profit Analyzer Tool and would reduce the time spent on cost model creation and maintenance process by 15 percent.
Using Microsoft Excel, the student team built a template with five built-in VBA macros that automated the cost modeling process. They reduced the cost model initialization time by more than 50 hours and the monthly maintenance time by more than five hours per week. Their efforts led to a 25 percent time reduction and $50k in potential new client income.
NC State College of Veterinary Medicine
Student Team: Ben Boyd, Sohil Doshi, Julia Peters and Toofan Salahuddin
The NC State College of Veterinary Medicine used long, time-consuming Google Forms to capture requests from their principal investigators. Also, the investigators could not duplicate, make minor changes and resubmit requests when they were completing a project again. Adding to the inefficiencies was a general lack of communication and awareness of the Lab Animal Resources (LAR) website.
After completing a thorough voice of customer analysis, the student team created a Vet Services Form Prefilled link that saves 30 minutes per submission. They added drop-down menus and redesigned the Forms page, which increased user-friendliness by 32%.
Pfizer – A
Student Team: Rachel Bricker, Catherine Chirichillo, Annemarie Marshall, Matthew McGovern and David Trombley
Pfizer’s instrument management and acquisition process in its Rocky Mount quality laboratory was disjointed and lacked a digital data management platform, wasting time and money and risking violating Good Manufacturing Practices.
The senior design team recommended key data metrics based on Pfizer’s goals, proposed a data collection method to track these metrics and suggested an accessible visualization method for the data.
Pfizer – B
Student Team: Georgia Burgess, Nicole Gorrell, Madelaine Hiriak, David Labrador and Jackson Proctor
Pfizer wanted to reduce the costs and eliminate the non-value-added time of its manual pH data collection process at its Rocky Mount facility.
The student team developed programs to automate the data collection process and store the information in a centralized database. Additionally, they provided an SOP and rollout plan to ease the transition from a manual to an automated process.
Root Causes
Student Team: Jack Halasz, Joseph McConnell and Kate Moore
Root Causes wanted to improve its fresh produce delivery program to meet the higher demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The senior design team created an app that reduced data entry time by 25 percent, decreased weekly shopping time by more than 82 percent and increased the program’s food production efficiency by more than 100 percent.
Vanguard Furniture
Student Team: Harrison Johnson, Chris Pennella, Steven Rehard and Taylor Seeling
As part of its 5-year automation plan, Vanguard Furniture wanted to add new machinery and design an ideal future state layout using lean methodologies.
The senior design team conducted a root cause analysis to determine the shop areas most affected by waste. They then created a simulation model to support purchasing a new CNC router and validate machinery and shelving relocation. The model also gave valuable data on reducing non-value-added travel, improving worker utilization and increasing profits by adding the new machinery.
West Pharmaceuticals
Student Team: Ahmad Awamleh, Dennis Estevez and Karl Soliman
West Pharmaceuticals wanted to increase its production of components for distributing the COVID vaccine to meet the high demand. But, it needed to determine where additional resources would have the most significant impact on their production rates.
The senior design team created current state value stream maps to identify bottlenecks in the top five running product lines. Based on their analysis, the team proposed solutions to balance the production lines and decrease non-value added time across the manufacturing process.
