Engineering Commons^™

Expansion In Existing And Future Franchises, Shane Hart, Daniel Jeng

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Zensho Group has recently acquired the restaurant US based chains CoCo’s and Carrows but has not been able to affirm the same growth as the company has established in its home country of Japan. In order to fulfill their need to grow, extensive market analysis and research needs to be done. An expansion eastward and the introduction of their flagship restaurant chain, Sukiya, would offer growth potential. Determining the best locations for these new stores is the goal of this project. Low cost and high market penetration potential will be used to recommend the ideal locations that will benefit the …

Sustainable Climate Control For Mid-Rise Office Building In The Salt Lake Valley, Philip M. Coleman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report examines the sustainability of Trane’s EarthWiseTM climate control systems in the Salt Lake Valley (and the United States Mountain West in general). A simulation is performed to determine the best climate control system for a LEED Silver, 5-story tenant office building. This new building is a duplication of a pre-existing building. The climate control system installed at the preexisting building is used as a baseline against which three (3) alternative systems are compared. The social, ecological, and economic impact of each alternative is examined to determine which is the most sustainable. Since the baseline system is a proven …

A Practical Approach To Computer Donation Supply Chain For Non-Profit Organizations, John Jacob Burrell, Adam Robert Carpenter

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The United States today has a plethora of unused electronic equipment. This equipment comes from universities, small businesses, corporations, and many other sources. This project looks at the best way to put this equipment back to use for the remainder of its usable life by donating it to non-profit organizations in need. In order to complete this project it was necessary to research the areas of Supply Chain Management, Operations Research, and Engineering Economics. The approach for this specific project first involves analyzing the current donation process at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, and its ability to …

Carbon Fiber Subwoofer Enclosure, Dustin Trone

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This project addressed a gap between consumer demand and market supply for performance car audio systems. It was recognized that there is a current desire for products made with carbon fiber due to its aesthetic appeal, strength to weight qualities, and general popularity. And this desire for such products applies to audio systems, and more specifically to aftermarket subwoofer systems. The projects main goal was to develop a product to meet the largely unmet demand for a carbon fiber subwoofer enclosure. This project centered on the best way to manufacture a carbon fiber subwoofer enclosure, with a focus on materials, …

Automation Of Pillow Speaker Button Testing To Avoid Repetitive Strain Injuries In Testing Technicians, Tyler P. Finnegan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Abstract Anacom MedTek, a medical device company, produces pillow speakers as their main product line. Pillow speakers are a healthcare communications tool that allow for hospital patients to control many entertainment and environmental components of the hospital room from one controller. These pillow speaker devices have anywhere from 3 to 27 metal dome key cap buttons based on their customization. Before they can be shipped to a customer, each button must be tested to ensure that it is functioning properly. This test is currently done manually by a testing technician. With so many buttons to be tested for each unit …

Pull Production System Training Guide, Adem Bilgutay

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This book is a series of lessons designed to train operators and managers in pull manufacturing. It begins with a description of the different forms of waste that a system can help to identify and eliminate. The second section details the kanban as a system for controlling flow and as a powerful tool for identifying problems. It will describe the many different variations of kanban that exist to control flow in different production environments and the calculations that allow them to be used effectively. The final section will detail the activities that an operator should engage in when there is …

Testing The Test: Validity And Reliability Of Senior Exit Exam, Lizabeth Schlemer, Daniel Waldorf

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

A senior exit exam is considered an excellent direct measure of student learning for ABET assessment, but the usefulness of the information gathered is related to the validity and reliability of the test itself. The Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo has used a content exam for several years. This paper will discuss test development, administration, and the role it plays in the assessment process. In addition, the test is evaluated using the standard psychometric techniques of reliability and validity. The results of the evaluation are used to refine the test. The importance …

Assessing Curriculum Improvement Through Senior Projects, Jianbiao Pan, Albert Liddicoat, James G. Harris, Linda Shepherd

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Senior project and/or capstone design courses are intended to provide a culminating design experience for students and to demonstrate their understanding of engineering knowledge and their ability to apply that knowledge to practical problems. It is expected that the quality and attributes of students’ senior design projects can be used as a good measure of determining how well the curriculum prepares students to engage in engineering design as well as a measure of faculty teaching and student learning. This paper reports the results of a study designed to assess whether the new computer engineering curriculum implemented at Cal Poly over …

Development And Assessment Of A Pcb Layout And Manufacturong Laboratory Module In Introductory Electric Circuits For Ee And Non-Ee Majors, Albert Liddicoat, Jianbiao Pan, James G. Harris, Gary Perks, Linda Shepherd

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In standard introductory electric circuits laboratories for electrical engineering (EE) majors and non-EE majors, prototype boards are typically used to construct and test electric circuits. Students typically do not learn how to design and manufacture Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) that are commonly used in more sophisticated design projects and other engineering applications. This paper will present the development and assessment of a PCB layout and manufacturing laboratory module that has been used in introductory electric circuits laboratories for EE and non-EE majors. The feasibility of integrating the new PCB layout and manufacturing module into the electric circuit course will be …

Laser Clean Room Re-Design: A Manufacturing Facility Re-Layout, Jennifer J. Siu

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Alcon’s Laser Clean Room fosters inefficient production practices, is outdated for its current process, and lacking in clear process/product flow. A facility re-design is applied to bring order, efficiency, and optimize flow in the laser production lines.

Deliverables include a new layout that decreases product travel distances and increases productivity as well as an implementation plan and cost/savings analysis. Major design decisions include downsizing the clean room, sorting to find waste and establishing clear process/product flows. The design was implemented within three weeks and results yield 29% reduction of product travel distance, 10.4 hrs/day saved from eliminated gowning time and …

Process Improvement For The Department Of Surgery Sierra Vista Medical Center, Jessica Paz

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report proposes and analyzes process improvement methods for the Surgical Services Department at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center. The department currently operates with an average of 25% of elective cases starting on time. This can be attributed to a number of inefficiencies that occur throughout the hospital.

The following Industrial Engineering methods were utilized to improve patient flow:  creation of a data collection system to quantify delays  use of simulation and facility redesign techniques to determine feasibility and benefits of moving towards a surgical center model  development of a user interfaced database to record and analyze …

Increasing Production Capacity At A Start Up Biomedical Company, Traci J. Otsuji

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The following senior project was first introduced during a summer internship at a biomedical company called Asthmatx Inc. Asthmatx is responsible for the development and manufacturing of a catheter‐based device for moderate to severe cases of asthma. Upon the approval of FDA, Asthmatx had planned to ramp up their production capacity significantly in order to accommodate the potential growth.

The first step in the process improvement was a facility reconfiguration that involved the adjustment of process sequencing and the implementation of ergonomic catheter channels. Next, time studies were conducted to gain more accurate time standards of the production process. After …

Lean Inventory Management System For Boeing Missile Defense, Danielle Partridge

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Lean inventory management is influential for business. One of the wastes businesses aim to reduce, using lean principles, is inventory. Inventory management provides the essential tools for eliminating extra inventory and cost that is tied up in capital.

Boeing’s Ground Based Missile Defense inventory area was failing at meeting their proprietary lean manufacturing goals. There was a need for an inventory system that included: lean principles, inventory management and user-friendly capability. The goal of this project’s inventory management database process was to minimize inventory investment while still meeting functional requirements. The deliverables for this project met the needs of Boeing’s …

Cable Time Estimation Database, Joshua L. Okerman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The use of time standards are the basis for a high efficiency system in the manufacturing environment. This project will investigate the process followed to design and develop a database used to calculate accurate cable assembly time standards used for scheduling at General Atomics. This project will then justify the use of the Cable Time Estimation Database, through an economic analysis compared to the current methods applied.

Police Operations Simulation, Robert Mcgee

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In this report, the author explains the process of creating the Police Operations Simulation, shows step-by-step how it works, and statistically analyzes the results from SLOPD’s own proposed and current schedules. The data-gathering from the department and the simulation itself will receive the bulk of the coverage in this report, followed by sample results from SLOPD and a business plan for future sale to other departments.

Using the given numbers, it appears that the proposed schedule will result in significantly improved coverage for the city of San Luis Obispo. While any increase in the number officers on patrol tends to …

Ergonomic Methods To Improve Safety In The Construction Sector And Reduce Costs, Mona Barjasteh

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Many small construction companies have difficulty providing a safe working environment for their employees because of their lack of resources. There is a need to provide a manual for small construction companies employing 10 or fewer workers with the best ergonomic solutions of the top most common injuries. Accidents in the construction field are very high with nearly 175,00o nonfatal injuries and 1,121 deaths in 2002. The nonfatal cases occur 7.1 times per 100 full time workers, while serious injuries occur 2.8 times per 100 full time workers. This information reveled the importance of focusing on minor injuries in order …

Assessing Living Arrangements In Residential Halls, Romel Penaflor Auza

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Hundreds of thousands of high school graduates head off to college each fall not knowing the environment they'll be living in for the next four years. The factors that predict success in the academic, social, and personal aspect of these freshmen students' lives revolves around one aspect that is often times overlooked. Freshmen students are subjected to the fast paced lifestyle of college and often times they need to feel “at home”. Their personal space becomes a matter that is important to them in relation to their success in the three aspects of academic success, social integration, and personal health. …

Statistical Quality Control In The Health Care Industry, Roberto Arce

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In recognition to the increased length of stay of discharge patients, deteriorating patient care and staff satisfaction in a emergency department (ED), this project was set to improve these measures without reducing staff, adding new workers, and without increasing the number of beds. Lean methods such as value stream mapping (VSM) formed the basis of the project. This tool helped identify the patient process flow through the (ED) as well as the valued added and non-value added steps of the process. This project describes value stream map development in the emergency department at a community hospital. A current-state value stream …

An Alternative To Stretch Wrap Using Triple Bottom Line, Christian Guirola

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Packaging products has always been a major sector of industries. Mass producing manufacturing companies use wooden pallets to store and transport items; these products are stacked and then secured by wrapping stretch wrap around them. The main issue with this packaging method is that millions of pounds of waste is produced. Some of the other effects include green house gas emissions during its production, limited recycling, and high packaging costs. In order to reduce the amounts of stretch wrap used by industries and distribution centers, there was a need to research and evaluate alternate methods to secure products on pallets. …

Project Selection And Process Plan Design For Alternative Ime 143/144 Final Project, Joseph S. Anderson, Sarah R. Shackelford

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Hundreds of students each year enroll in IME 143 or IME 144, freshman-level machining classes, and complete an air motor to demonstrate the skills they have acquired on a variety of manufacturing processes. The air motor, however is useful only as a teaching tool in the classroom; once the students bring them home, the air motor becomes little more than a trophy at best.

With the capabilities of the machining lab, a final project can be developed that can have a benefit to people in need while maintaining educational value. This project details a process plan for a manual water …

Maintenance Service Request Process Optimization For The Cliffs Resort At Shell Beach, John Birch

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This process optimization project utilizes a new idea to have an Access 2007 database automatically send a text message to a given cellular telephone. The hotel’s maintenance service request process is outdated and inefficient, relying solely on paper and human memory for success. Initiation, tracking, and recording the maintenance service requests need to be automated to optimize this process. The solution is a working database which employs said automation using Access 2007 in combination with a separate program created to facilitate the automatic text messaging. Implementing this database will result in higher customer satisfaction for the hotel.

Using Sports Coaching Techniques To Enhance Project Based Learning Instruction, Lizabeth Schlemer, Faith Mimnaugh

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

As instructors attempt to apply project based learning as a preferred pedagogy for many aspects of engineering education, countless questions are raised. For instance, how do instructors assess individual performance in a team based environment? How do instructors prepare students for the culminating presentation or report? How do instructors develop the students individually? After reviewing literature on both project based learning and exceptional coaching, we have found that much can be learned from John Wooden, Phil Jackson and other coaches. This paper will organize some of the best practices in sports coaching and draw parallels that will enhance student learning …

Feasibility Study Of Bamboo Drumsticks, Edward Chow

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This project is a study on the feasibility of introducing bamboo as an alternative material for the application of drumsticks. The American drumstick industry has been historically very stable and robust due to its commitment to high quality. This high quality comes at the price of large amounts of waste that is largely burned to provide facility heating. With the recent push for corporate responsibility of the total life cycle of their products and the push for increased sustainability, bamboo was considered as a viable resource as a partial alternative or complete replacement. Prototypes of the bamboo drumsticks were fabricated …

Analysis Of An Economic Order Quantity And Reorder Point Inventory Control Model For Company Xyz, Jose L. Gonzalez, Daniel Gonzalez

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

As a result to today’s uncertain economy, companies are searching for alternative ways to stay competitive. In which, Company XYZ has been faced with an ineffective forecasting method that has lead to multiple product stock outs. The issue faced has caused sales loss as well as profit loss, which companies can not afford to lose if they want to stay competitive. This project goes through the process of analyzing the company’s current forecasting model and recommending an inventory control model to help them solve their current issue. As a result, an Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and a Reorder Point was …

Facility And Database Design For The Research Development Center, Nicholas J. Mehas

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project is to create a new facility and database design to replace the current Research Development Center located on the campus of California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo and the database in use at the facility. Currently the Research Development Center is a condemned building and the database lacks up-to-date technology. The project will develop new designs for both, based on concurrent engineering. The outcome of the project will be a new design for a new building that increases capacity and capability; a new database design that integrates newer technologies and methods for tracking tools.

E-Waste Solutions For Cal Poly And The Central Coast, Andrea Schmidt

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Executive Summary The focus of this paper is to explore the feasibility of an e-waste processing lab on the Cal Poly campus which can operate as an ongoing service to the community while maintaining an academic focus on the issues of end-of-life electronics. The result is a 30’ by 60’ lab on campus that includes 40 work stations, and 3,848 square feet of shelving. The lab can be entirely run by students with 36 hours per week of inspection and pre-production inventory activities and 6 hours of de-manufacturing activities, processing 264 e-waste units per month. Cal Poly students will train …

Axle Assembly Takt Time Change, Punit Shivji

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The Toyota managed New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. automotive plant is currently going through difficult economic times. To prepare for future production demands, the plant will need to decrease production output and maintain a lower volume of vehicles produced with a high level of quality and efficiency. This project will take on the reorganization of the rear axle assembly lines and the departments that are involved to ensure a cost effective, efficient, and safe approach in manufacturing Toyota's Tacomas. Toyota recommends the Toyota production system as well as any knowledge and experience obtained from previous jobs and coursework to be …

Alleviation Of Spindle Transfer, Blake Ochs, Whitney Bone

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Haas Automation, Inc. is one of the largest CNC machine tool builders in the world. They produce an assortment of machines that come in many different sizes, however, all machines have in common the central tool that allows them to perform their surfacing and bore functions, the spindle. As with the machines themselves, the spindles can also range in size depending on the type of machine they are going into. These spindles are assembled step by step and as components are added to them, several models become so heavy that it is not feasible to have operators lift them by …

Process Design For Aeration Of Facial Prosthetic, Nathaniel J. Urciuoli

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Facial prosthetics are becoming a necessary step for the recovery of injured veterans and civilians who have suffered severe facial burning. Current users of such prosthetics are not able to wear the prosthetic for an extended period of time due to uncomfortable conditions created by the silicone material. A solution for this problem was to develop a process for creating small holes similar to skin pores that will both ventilate and aid in the evaporation of accumulated sweat under the prosthetic.

The main steps of this process were to create a flexible fixture capable of supporting and securing the prosthetic …

Ernie Ball Guitars Woodshop Facilities Redesign, Cameron Lea Schlemer

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report details a facilities design for Ernie Ball’s guitar and bass guitar manufacturing facility in San Luis Obispo, CA. Specifically, this project will redesign the layout for the Woodshop, the largest of the 5 manufacturing cells in the facility. This project was completed using the Systematic Layout Planning procedure and focused mostly on phase II and III in which the specifics for a layout are determined, however, space requirements were not evaluated as it was not within scope.

The first step was to develop departments in the facilities; two master departments were identified for the neck manufacturing process and …