prepare for the future with Senior Design

At Mercer's School of Engineering, we believe in the philosophy "learning by doing." As such, all engineers participate in hands-on projects during their undergraduate careers, including a senior design project spanning their last two semesters at Mercer. Within this project, students are encouraged to work on interdisciplinary teams to design, build, and test a realistic engineering system with a substantial industrial management component or focus. Students combine the knowledge they have gained through classes taken in various specialties to produce a comprehensive final project.

For a listing of student projects and a schedule of presentation times for the current semester, click here. To see an example project, check out the project highlighted below which is indicative of a successful project within the industrial management degree path.

Senior Design Spotlight

Amanda Parrish, an Industrial Management major, teamed with Laura Brown Mock, whose specialization was Industrial Engineering, to complete a senior design project for YKK USA’s Macon plant. The team's task was to improve the productivity and efficiency of the final metal zipper assembly process in which workers use a machine to cut the zippers to the appropriate length, add the zipper “top stops,” inspect the items for quality, and package the zippers for shipment.

Mock and Parish aimed at increasing the productivity of the assembly area they were told to observe by 20 percent and the efficiency by 30 percent. Much to their delight, within two weeks of making recommendations to YKK management about how to improve the process, the assembly area productivity increased by more than 70 percent and the machine efficiency rose by 30 percentage points.

Dr. Scott Shultz, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and the students’ senior design project manager, said the students’ work on this project was truly outstanding. “These types of results without spending any money on capital improvements are almost unheard of,” he said. “Usually plants get excited with 5 or 10 percent increases.” Robert Stamps, vice president of manufacturing planning at YKK and a 1974 graduate of Mercer’s College of Liberal Arts, said, he, too, was impressed with the students’ work. “YKK is a technically oriented manufacturing company seeking to improve our processes so we can be more competitive on a global basis. These industrial engineering students are helping us achieve that goal,” he said. “Amanda and Laura have demonstrated a high degree of technical expertise and engineering know-how.”

The new work configurations that Mock and Parish developed after extended video and time studies can also be implemented at other YKK facilities, increasing the scope of their project’s success. Stamps said it is too early to determine the actual cost savings Parish and Mock’s recommendations have afforded the company, but a conservative estimate of the savings is $43,000 annually.

Parish and Mock credit their Mercer education for their success. Parish said Mercer challenged her throughout her four years, and this has prepared her to tackle the challenges she will face in industry.