Industrial Engineering Seniors Recognized With Awards for Two-Semester Capstone Projects

Industrial engineering students were honored this spring for two semesters of work solving real-world problems alongside industrial partners.

During the 2019-20 academic year, 65 industrial engineering students participated in the Industrial Engineering Senior Capstone Experience as part of 13 teams of five students. Every student pursuing the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas is required to complete the two-semester course sequence. Richard Cassady, university professor of industrial engineering, coordinates the Industrial Engineering Capstone Experience courses.

The teams are matched with an industrial partner and led by a student project. In the fall semester, teams begin by conducting background research on their industry partner and the issues of interest to that partner.

Students develop a detailed understanding of the process or system of interest and obtain the data necessary to conduct preliminary analysis into the issues faced by the industry partner. Based on their preliminary analysis, they define objectives for their spring semester work, the performance measures they will use to measure their success in achieving the objectives, and the deliverables they will provide their partner at the end of the year.

In the spring semester, teams apply their industrial engineering skills to achieve their project objectives. Through their defined performance measures, they assess their success in achieving their objectives and create their project deliverables. They also document information necessary for their industry partner to use their deliverables.

With the end-of-year capstone symposium cancelled this year, the awards were made based on the entirety of the work and efforts of the teams throughout the two semester course.

Team Awards

• Project of the Year: Casey Randolph, Project Manager; Jillian Hatfield, Brandon Fangio, Sullivan Siebken, and Xavier Wills
  Project Title: Expediting Pricing Analyst Workflow by Categorizing Sales Proposals using Logistic Regression and Machine Learning
  Industry Partner: ArcBest
• Data Analysis Award: Cayman Carlisle, Project Manager; Elizabeth Bean, James Gairhan, Annie Peta, and William Warren
  Project Title: Improving the Re‐Scheduling of Steel Bar Downstream Processes by Predicting Rework Tendencies and Processing Times
  Industry Partner: Gerdau
• Modeling Award: Alexandra Gentile, Project Manager; Irina Britten, Brock Dunn, Wesley Nimmo, and Keith Scheffler
  Project Title: Optimizing Intermodal Dray Driver Scheduling under Daily Freight Imbalance using Stochastic Optimization
  Industry Partner: J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.
• Decision Support Award: Clay Ferguson, Project Manager; Alex Hendrickson, Jonah Murrey, Wade Shike, and Andrew Watson
  Project Title: Reducing Expiration and Returns in Sterile Processing using Reorder Point and Economic Order Quantity Methods
  Industry Partner: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
• Impact Award: Karlton Haney, Project Manager; Chase Daril, Trevor Perry, Jack West, and Bryan Withers
  Project Title: Minimizing Operational Cost of Fleet Allocation using Linear Programming
  Industry Partner: ArcBest

Individual Awards

• Outstanding Project Managers: Clay Ferguson, Casey Randolph, and Cayman Carlisle.
• Outstanding Team Members: Alex Hendrickson, Kayla McKeon, and Tevari Barker
• Outstanding Faculty Advisors: Professor, Manuel Rossetti; Professor, Sandra Eksioglu; and Associate Professor, Justin Chimka
• Outstanding Industry Partners: Alex Hoge and Trenton Cason, ArcBest; Joseph Sanford and Kevin Sexton, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; and Garrett Rea, The Hershey Company

Other Projects

Additional projects the Capstone Experience Teams completed were:

• Project Title: Improve Staffing Strategies to Meet Seasonal Patient Census Variation using Discrete-Event Simulation and Optimization
  Team Members: Brianna Gomez, Project Manager; Matthew Phillips, Brandon Satterwhite, Mason McLaughlin, and Ana Guerra
  Industry Partner: Arkansas Children's Northwest Emergency Department
• Project Title: Improving Manufacturing Shop Process Visibility through Simulation Modeling
  Team Members: Kaitlin Erickson, Project Manager; Erin Hills, Ryan Sheppard, Patrick Simpson, and Anna Watkins
  Industry Partner: Dassault Falcon Jet
• Project Title: Predicting Customer Financial Risk
  Team Members: Griffin Mathews, Project Manager; Natalie Akers, Tevari Barker, Chandler Little, and Alex Souvanouphong
  Industry Partner: J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.
• Project Title: Improving Forecasting Methods for Course Enrollment Using Predictive Modeling, and Course Balancing Methods Using Nonlinear Programming
  Team Members: Alexander Johnson, Project Manager;  Carlos Sanabria, Carlos Diaz, Bradley Taylor, and Ali Alsufayan
  Industry Partner: Institutional Research and Assessment at the University of Arkansas
• Project Title: Forecasting Innovation Product Rollout Sales through Machine Learning Techniques
  Team Members: Paul Sherrod, Project Manager; Ryan Hamilton, Elliot Porsch, Caroline Rhomberg, and Madison Stacy
  Industry Partner: The Hershey Company
• Project Title: Automating Vehicle Routing Summaries with Simulation for Uncertain Node Locations
  Team Members: Nathan Clark, Project Manager; Justin Blair, John Foltz, Sierra Wagner, and Mary Pollmann
  Industry Partner: J.B. Hunt Transport Service, Inc.
• Project Title: Reducing Triage Protocol Errors in the Arkansas Trauma System using a Neural Network Algorithm
  Team Members: Henley Wells, Project Manager; Maria Rene Arandia, Miles Gagnepain, Diego Rodriguez, and Donna Quedens
  Industry Partner: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
• Project Title: Maximizing Violation Capture Rate through Simulation and Optimization of Parking Control Officer Routing
  Team Members: Jeremy Muniz, Project Manager; Douglas Kamarade, Kayla McKeon, Christine Rheinberger, and Franco Suito Alayza
  Industry Partner: University of Arkansas Transit and Parking