Capstone Design

Industrial Engineering 441 Capstone Design is a one-semester senior design course in which students engage in industry projects and practice industrial engineering under the guidance of an experienced Registered Professional Engineer, as well as engineers and managers from a sponsor company. The objective of these projects is to provide economic value to the company and a practical education to the students.

student group photo at construction site

Project Description

Each project has four stages of design:

  1. Problem Definition
  2. Current State Analysis
  3. Future State Collaborative Design
  4. Final Project Validation/Delivery

Students perform in-depth quantitative analysis and design throughout the entire project. This includes extensive on-site and web/phone company involvement to ensure success. As a group, students are required to devote 60 hours per week for 14 weeks to the project.

We look for projects with an economic impact potential of over $100,000. Projects can be in workplace design, 5S/VSM and LEAN, time estimation and process engineering, factory layout, scheduling, inventory analysis, product/process quality analysis, process simulation, ergonomics, data mining and statistical analysis, manufacturability analysis, economic modeling, VB.NET/VBA/SQL programming and industrial automation CNC/RFID/BarCode/PLC Prog/Transducer selection.

Project Impacts

In a recent semester, the average project impact value was $969,000 with 3 of the 8 companies generating over $1 million in financial impact for a total economic value of $7.7 million from the class. After the final reports, companies agreed to implement an average 77.6% of the student recommendations with 6 of the 8 projects having an expected implementation percentage exceeding 80%.

Project Examples

John Deere

This team worked on a project in the John Deere Engine Audit Lab. They focused on increasing throughput time for repaired and audited engines so that the lab could audit more engines.

Vermeer

The goal of this project was to design a tool or process to correct ergonomic challenges which will be applicable to multiple baler types. With the implementation of their designs, Vermeer will be able to save at least $10,000 annually.