STEM EE Capstone Conclusion: Success through Improvement

Final Recommendations for Minimizing Errors

My recommendation to this company is to create a computer program that pulls information off a purchase order that a customer sends, creates a job traveler for the factory, and automatically orders the correct powder for the job. This system would not only eliminate several human errors that occur, but also would save the company money by reducing the amount of work they have to pay a person to do. In addition, I would recommend that the company put a policy in place for each shipment to be checked by two separate people before sending it out to improve accuracy. This may take a little extra time, but it will save money in the long term because it will reduce the number of returns that happen.

Overall, with a few small changes this company could experience immense improvements in profit as well as customer satisfaction. This capstone case study displays the benefits of Industrial Engineering models in the manufacturing industry. As we continue to grow into a more efficient society, both in business and daily life, Industrial Engineers are at the forefront of innovation. The future lies in the hands of those who are always brainstorming ways to make improvements.

STEM EE CAPSTONE UPDATE 2: Analyzing the Why

Making the Most of a Pandemic

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I flew home to Connecticut in late March. With my heart heavy, I finished my semester from home. For my capstone project, this trip home actually proved to be helpful. I was able to return to the plant, as manufacturing is considered “essential”, and gain additional observation hours as I recorded issues I saw. I was able to work in the role of a sales administrative assistant, so I worked firsthand with entering orders from customers and communicating with them about shipping.

Problems throughout the System

At this powdered metal part manufacturing company, customers send orders via email. Then a person in sales enters the information from that order into our computer system. The computer plans the production and schedules a start date. The plant manager is responsible for ensuring that production actually starts on that date. If it starts on the correct date, it typically should finish in time to be shipped on the correct date.

This system is good but certainly not great because there are far too many opportunities for human error, and I saw pretty much all of these errors occur. Starting with my job in sales, if I type the requested ship date incorrectly, the computer will calculate the wrong production start date for the order. In the factory, in order to start production, they need the proper amount and type of powder. It was a frequent occurrence that production would not start because the powder had not been ordered or delivered yet. Lastly, even if the parts were made and ready to go on time, the shipping department could make an error with the label that would cause the shipment to be late.

An ISE Tool to Display Causes to a Final Problem

The problem question that I was exploring is: why are so many shipments late? In my ISE class this Spring I learned how to create a fish bone diagram to display possible causes to this issue. Fish bone diagrams separate the causes into four categories: man, method, material, and machine. I have created one with the issues I listed above and more to show my findings with my observation at the plant this Spring.

STEM EE Capstone Update 1: Two Years of Shipments and Returns

What are we focusing on?

To begin the analysis of the data collected from a small manufacturing company (name withheld for privacy purposes), I decided to look at quarterly data from 2018-2019. I compared percent of on time deliveries, percent of parts returned, and percent of lots returned to customer satisfaction rating. The customer satisfaction rating is developed quarterly from feedback given by customers, they rate the company from 1 to 100 which I have displayed as a percent.

 

Let’s Look at the Numbers:

When organized into a table the data looks like this:

Quarterly Data

I decided to take this data and create two separate Line Charts to display the data in a more clear way.

The first chart shows Customer Satisfaction and On Time Delivery as percentages over time. The two worst quarters are emphasized with red boxes. The lowest percent of on time deliveries occurred during the first quarters of both years.

Customer Satisfaction and On Time Delivery

The second chart displays the percentages of parts and lots returned over time. The percentages are very low and are zero for many quarters, however there are a couple peaks, the greatest of which also occur during the first quarters of both years (again emphasized with red boxes).

Returns

 

What’s Next?

So the question is: What happened in the First Quarters of 2018 & 2019?

As I continue my analysis, I will attempt to discover possible causes for issues in these two quarters. It seems fairly obvious that when parts are late or need to be returned, it will result in lower customer satisfaction, this is evident from the chart above. But, what caused the late deliveries and necessity for parts to be returned? My next update will include the use of Industrial Systems Engineering tools to analyze the possible causes for the known effect.

STEM EE Capstone Planning

A brief timeline of my STEM EE Scholars capstone:

  1. Summer-Winter Break 2019 – Initial Research & Data Collection
  2. January 2020 – Introduction + Planning
  3. January-February 2020 – Data Analysis
  4. February 2020 – Creation of Visuals to represent collected Data
  5. March 2020 – Conclusion
  6. March 2020 – Completion of Final Paper

STEM EE Capstone Introduction: Efficiency and Productivity in the Industrial World

This Fall I applied and was accepted into the Industrial and Systems Engineering major at Ohio State. When I see inefficiencies, hazards that could cause injury, or improper use of equipment/employees, my immediate question is: how can we fix this? When I was brainstorming what to do for my capstone project, I decided I wanted to attempt to answer this question in the scope of one company using real life data.

Both precision and accuracy in the manufacturing industry are imperative. If companies are not careful, the parts they are are creating will not meet the customer’s specifications, causing them to return the shipment, and causing the company to lose a significant amount of profit. These errors, when occurring on a large scale are highly problematic. How can we best avoid inaccuracies? (Helmenstine, 2014).

As a customer, when you order something you want it to come on time. As the manufacturer it is our job to meet those time constraints. That is not so easy when the customer’s order includes thousands of parts. How can we maximize productivity in order to meet time constraints? (Effectiviology).

In my capstone project I hope to dive into data as well as qualitative observation to come up with meaningful conclusions and suggestions to reduce errors of quality and productivity.

 

Citations:

Effectiviology. (n.d.). Retrieved December 29, 2019, from https://effectiviology.com/deadlines/.

Helmenstine, T. (2014, June 12). What Is the Difference Between Accuracy and Precision? Retrieved from https://sciencenotes.org/what-is-the-difference-between-accuracy-and-precision/.

 

About Me

The first day of my freshmen year of high school, I walked into my introduction to engineering class and noticed something strange. There were boys everywhere. I quickly realized that I was one out of three girls in a class of 20 students. When I walked into this class, for the first time in my life, I was a minority. Education in STEM is something I feel incredibly passionate about, especially for girls. I have noticed that many girls show a lack of confidence in their math and science abilities, not because they are not capable but simply because they feel overshadowed. This became increasingly evident to me through the math tutoring that I did for many students in my senior year of high school.

As I noticed this issue in my school I began to encourage girls to embrace and enjoy mathematics, urged my friends to take engineering classes, and worked to build the confidence of the girls that I tutored. Diversity of men and women in the STEM fields adds unique perspectives to areas that constantly need new ideas. Now at Ohio State I am a part of the STEM Exploration and Engagement Scholars group where I will be able to continue my passion for encouraging others in math and science. The greatest innovations of the future generation will come from a collaboration of both male and female minds.

My name is Erica West, I am an Industrial and Systems Engineering student at The Ohio State University and fun fact: I am also a dance minor! I grew up in the small town of Killingworth, Connecticut where I was able to learn and grow in my two strongest passions: dance and math. I was blessed to have the opportunities to use these passions to reach my community through dance performances for charities, math tutoring for students in my school, and even hosting an engineering outreach presentation for the local middle school. As a freshman at Ohio State, I continued these passions through youth leadership at Rock City Church and involvement in STEM EE scholars as well as the Society of Women Engineers. As a current Sophomore, I am still involved in the previously listed organizations, as well as AWARES a mentorship program for women in STEM. I look to the future with the hope that my life will continue to reflect these aspirations and that my accomplishments will combine to create an education and career path that brings not only success but also abundant joy. I love that I get to be involved at such an incredible university and I am grateful for these pivotal years of growth and adventures, go bucks!!

Creating Standards

Everyone comes into college with ideas, hopes, and expectations of what they believe their experience will be like. But college is synonymous with change. Every single person that enters the college environment will experience some type of change in their life. I knew that I would be experiencing lifestyle changes and obvious logistical changes from high school life, however what I didn’t expect was my beliefs, my mindset, and what I thought I knew about myself to be so drastically challenged.

The last three months at Ohio State have helped me to discover what I truly desire out of life. This is the biggest thing that I have learned in college so far. It is not some difficult academic course, a friendship issue, or any other common college change that people give you advice about when you leave home for the first time. What I have gained is simply understanding. I now know, for the most part, what I want to get out of the life that I live on this earth. Through this understanding I believe that I will be able to shape my career and personal goals to align with my own definition of fulfillment. What do I want to accomplish? After determining this I can now ask myself how can I get there? As I look to next semester, I hope to continue exploring my definitions of success, fulfillment, and happiness as preparation for building a life that meets my personal standards. Far too often we allow society to define these ideas for us, causing us to work towards things that don’t bring us joy. When we create our own standards, we can experience freedom knowing that what fulfills us will never be the exact same thing that fulfills someone else.

Volcano Outreach: The Importance of One

On Saturday October 20, my friend Allison and I joined the Women of Math and Science club on a trip to the Columbus library for an outreach event. The plan was to split into groups and read a book about volcanoes to children, afterwards all the groups would come together and we would demonstrate a volcano erupting with a model volcano. We arrived at the library around half an hour early to set up and prepare. As 10am rolled around we started to get nervous because no kids had shown up and the program was scheduled to start at that time. At around 10:15 one little girl came in crying with her mom. We quickly realized that this child had disabilities. We decided to start the program because even if we only had one child, that was enough.

Sitting in a circle passing a children’s book from college student to college student, reading to one little girl made me realize the significance of the impact we can make on just one child. This girl came in crying and left excited about volcanoes, fascinated with science, and most importantly with a smile on her face. Our team easily could have cancelled the event due to lack of turnout but instead all eight of us college girls invested our time into one little girl to make her feel special. Who knows, maybe someday that little girl will be a leader in a science or math field.

NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge: An Out of This World Experience

Picture this: on a chilly April morning in Killingworth, Connecticut, my dad, three eighteen year old boys, and I all packed into a Toyota highlander with a U-haul hitched on the back. You’re probably wondering what on earth would a group like that be doing and where would they be going? The answer is Mars, well not exactly but in a way we were, let me back up and explain the events that led up to that chilly April morning.

Let’s go back to where it began, I enrolled in a class at my high school called “Engineering Design and Development”  it is a team, project based class and it is only offered to seniors. Teams are formed in September and projects are developed throughout the entire year. To be honest, I wasn’t very excited to be in this class, I wanted to be in a different engineering class but it didn’t fit in my schedule. Looking back, I can not begin to explain how grateful I am that the other class didn’t fit and that I was placed in this one instead.

Groups and projects were chosen on a day when I was absent, so when I came back I was able to join whichever team I wanted. The team I picked was formed of the kids that were underestimated. They didn’t take all the AP courses and they joked around a lot, but the project the were doing fascinated me. They chose to build a pedal powered rover for a NASA competition in Alabama. I knew nothing about NASA or machines all I knew was that this was something I wanted to be part of.

Our team got to work immediately by researching the dozens of rules of the competition, brainstorming designs, and dreaming about making it to Alabama. Our teacher required every team to find an advisor from outside of the school. My dad was our first thought, and he was the most important edition to our team. He offered years of engineering experience and guidance, he allowed us to build in his shop, and he provided many of the materials that we needed.

As months began to pass, progress was slow, we faced funding challenges and difficult time restraints. By winter, our teacher and classmates had stopped believing that we would be ready to go to Alabama. We refused to let this stop us. We met every single Sunday in my dad’s metal shop to build our rover. We had to re design our wheels three times. It took several modifications to even get our transmission to run. Before this project, I had never even used a drill before, but I was eager to learn so my dad and my teammates taught me as we went. I gained more engineering knowledge about design process and construction in eight months with this project then I had in three years of engineering classes.

The spring rolled around and our rover was beginning to take shape. Our trip to Alabama, or as we liked to say Mars, was seeming like more and more of a reality. The school lacked the funding to pay for our trip, so we started a gofundme. Family members, members of our community, and anonymous sponsors came together to donate over $2000 to our team. We booked an Airbnb and rented a U-haul, we were ready for the trip of a lifetime.

The week before our trip we were at the shop every night, sometimes until midnight, making improvements on our rover. Three days before we left, we were pedaling our rover around the parking lot to practice for the course. We tried to go up a steep hill and the entire frame snapped in half. I was devastated. Looking back I realize that it is moments like this when the true character of a team will show. Our team could’ve given up, we experienced a major setback days before the competition. Instead, we stepped up. We had the parts to fix the frame shipped to us overnight and we rebuilt the frame in one day. The kids that everyone underestimated, turned out to be some of the hardest working students that I have ever met.

Now back to that April morning, we loaded up our U-haul and we were off, Alabama bound. After two long days of driving, and many fast food stops, we made it. Once in Alabama we continued to make changes to our rover including changing the wheel size on the day of the competition. At the competition, we pedaled our rover through a course that was meant to imitate the terrain of other planets, (rocks, sand, hills, craters, etc.). Our team did not do very well up against the other teams from high schools and universities around the globe, one tire came loose about half way through and the rear transmission gears were stripping from the high amount of torque placed on them. We did not win, but we certainly didn’t come in last, we were in the middle. However, we didn’t care about our placement, the experience we gained from the process was more valuable than any trophy would ever be.

For more information about the challenge: https://www.nasa.gov/roverchallenge/home/index.html