Senior Design

Overview

Senior Design exposes industrial engineering students to the design process and experience that is typical for a practicing industrial engineer. During Senior Design, students will be assigned projects based upon their areas of emphasis. Student teams will be paired with a project client. The teams will be required to integrate the knowledge and skills they have acquired throughout their undergraduate studies to develop innovative solutions that adhere to engineering standards as well as problem constraints.

Teams

Design projects will be completed by teams of three to five students during the last semester of their studies. The vast majority of these students will have acquired significant summer experience in industrial engineering. Teams will work closely with assigned faculty advisors throughout the design process. Students will meet with their faculty advisors on a bi-weekly basis in formal progress meetings, and as the need arises.

Project Management

The course instructor will solicit projects; select projects in consultation with the industrial engineering department faculty; and organize project kickoff meetings. For the remainder of the semester, each student team will be responsible for all project management, including adhering to deadlines, communicating with the client, ensuring that their work stays on schedule, organizing other project meetings, and related tasks and responsibilities.

Client Responsibilities

The client will provide the student team with a high-quality, challenging, and real-world problem to solve. Additionally, the client will provide the necessary background information and data; help define the problem; attend the kickoff meeting, midterm meeting, and final presentation; promptly reply to student requests for information throughout the semester; and complete the end-of-semester client survey.

Sponsor a Project

Clients are invited to financially sponsor the Industrial Engineering Senior Design class. For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact the course instructor.

Please note that sponsorship is not considered a contract for deliverables, as projects are carried out by undergraduate students pursuing an educational program and not providing engineering services.

Scope of Work

Students will each work approximately 100-150 hours over the course of the semester and produce a project report that may include preliminary designs, cost estimates, and related information.

Project Guidelines

The best projects have a very engaged client who will benefit from the work being performed. The client-team interaction and working relationship provides a central component of this real-world experience.

Projects must have a significant design component. Projects that allow students to evaluate multiple alternative solutions are desired. The student project team will deliver their final presentation to a diverse audience of stakeholders.