ISyE 412 Fundamentals Of Industrial Data Analytics
This project was designed to make us think outside the box, learn how to analyze large data sets, and turn these data sets into visual representations anyone can understand. The prompt was quite vague because the professor wanted us to be creative and allowed us to present on any topic we found interesting. My group found a large data set that broke Spotify songs into many different attributes, and we were able to answer multiple questions regarding what makes a song popular.
ISyE 315 Production Planning and Control
This was one of my favorite classes I took in college. I feel as though the skills learned in this class carried over to the my professional career better than any other class as a whole. The project was based around a fictional company, Minoqua Manufacturing, that was planning on expanding their company due to increased growth. We had to consider financial costs, projected material flow, number of machines based on utilization levels, and the payback period of bringing welding on site.
ISyE 350 Junior Design Laboratory
Junior Design Lab is a semester-long project class. The basis of the project was to design an automated retrieval system (ARS) for a fictional company, Dairy Land Inc. We needed to implement an ARS in their warehouse to lift the bins from inventory storage and bring them directly to the packing station where the packers remove the cheese. Some specifications and requirements defined the warehouse we had to work with, but otherwise, we were given creative freedom to design the ARS.
What I learned from this project:
- A basic understanding of how to use Tableau and how to create powerful and effective data visualizations
- How to combine Excel and Tableau to clean, sort, and visualize data
- How important clustering is to categorize data and gain valuable information from mass amounts of information
- Data sites like https://www.kaggle.com/datasets and https://www.data.gov/ exist to allow people to find and share data on any topic
What I learned from this project:
- A practical application of Excel functions to make financial decisions (ex. whether or not to bring in an outsourced process and determine future plant growth)
- How to use various software for creating the relationship diagrams, block diagrams, and plant layouts (e.g., Lucidchart, Visio)
- The different types of machines that can be used for material handling and the various costs, requirements, and benefits associated with them
- Different factors that must be considered when deciding whether to outsource or bring production onsite
What I learned from this project:
- Various project management tools including Gantt charts, activity network diagrams, and value stream mapping
- Using an iterative design process to eliminate bad designs and maintain continuous improvement
- Critical-to-quality trees can be used to break broad goals into measurable categories
- How to use Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) to identify potential problems
- Determining the importance of qualities can easily be done with a pairwise comparison
