Teams of industrial engineering students have spent the past year working with local companies, including Tyson and J.B. Hunt, using their engineering skills to help improve systems and processes. They will present their projects and the results of their efforts at the first ever Industrial Engineering Capstone Symposium.

The symposium will be from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 3, in the Arkansas Union Ballroom. Events scheduled that day include presentations from the teams, a poster session and an awards ceremony.

This is the first event of its kind and is the culmination of the Industrial Engineering Capstone Experience Course, INEG 4923. The course was recently extended to a two-semester course and teams students in groups of 3-4, matching them with an industry 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 the 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 the all-day Industrial Engineering Capstone Symposium.