This is one of the courses in the masters in supply chain engineering program offered by the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
What is a good course project?
This is not a capstone course, nor a faculty-led consulting project. The students have other class commitments in addition to other classes. The class project will be useful to the companies for providing a perspective when exploring alternatives for solving a problem or addressing a challenge.
The students will work in teams. Multiple teams can be assigned to your project but the students will work at Georgia Tech. They would benefit from a tour or a visit to your facility to learn about the physical system. Students are skilled with data mining and analysis. They can work on projects focused on storage allocation, order fulfillment process improvement, or other bottleneck processes redesign.
Please note that these are projects conducted by students with faculty advice, and therefore while clients are overwhelmingly satisfied and get value out of the generated results, there is no satisfaction guarantee.
Past project topics included:
- Layout improvement or design
- Capacity analysis and planning
- Order picking efficiency evaluation
- Slotting
- Cartonization improvement
- Pick-path optimization
- Warehouse processes review and improve
- Storage strategy evaluation
What we need from the client
- A description of your issue/concern
- Data and information that will be needed to address and explore the concern
- A description of the business and how the distribution center supports the business
- Descriptions of the distribution center and its operations
- Video tour, photos or the best option which is a visit from a company representative who can discuss all the above
- Finally, we ask that the client hear and critique the student presentations at the end of the semester.
What the client gets
- An enthusiastic and rigorous analysis of your problem
- Each group will deliver: A 30-minute presentation and a ten-page executive summary, plus a detailed report and all developed tools (spreadsheets, databases, custom computer programs with documentation).
- The chance to show off your company to 60 people who will become technical and business leaders in logistics.
How the project is chosen
- Will the project provide a good educational experience for the students?
- Is the project of sufficient technical interest but not too long for the semester?
- Will the client have sufficient data available in time to support the project?Note: It is very important that the company either have data ready at the start of the semester or that they can get it quickly.
Contact me at dima.nazzal@gatech.edu if you would like to discuss hosting a project.
Fall 2022 Project Timeline
| Week | Date | Project Works |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Aug 29 | Teams selected and team leaders appointed |
| 4 | Sept 12 | Client visits |
| 5 | Sept 19 | Data received and analysis starts |
| 6 | Sept 26 |
Data received and analysis starts Problem defined with client concern, goal, proposed approach, a plan to execute on the approach, and deliverables defined |
| 7 | Oct 3 | Problem defined with client concern, goal, proposed approach, a plan to execute on the approach, and deliverables defined |
| 10 | Oct 24 | Analysis done, tool or models built |
| 12 | Nov 7 | Analysis done, tool or models built |
| 15 | Nov 28 | Report and presentation* |
| 16 | Dec 5 | Submission of all deliverables to professor and clients* |