Business and Industry Interaction

Interactions
A strength of the ISE program is the level of interaction between students, faculty, and members of the business and industry community.  Students start interacting with local companies during their sophomore year and continue to increase the level of interaction until they complete their Senior Design Internship.

In addition to the student-company interactions, the department faculty receive feedback regularly through the input of the Industry Advisory Board, which meets at least twice a year.

Senior Design Internship

ISE 4510, Engineering Design Internship, is the senior capstone design course. Teams of IE senior students solve engineering problems submitted by participating companies or organizations. In the design internship, students gain valuable, real design experience as a part of their studies, thereby fulfilling a major educational requirement, the completion of a capstone engineering design project, while substantially strengthening their industrial engineering capabilities.

As design interns, students receive "pay" for their services in academic credit. They are also given the opportunity to practice engineering skills in a real environment.

Students usually work in teams of three to five persons. Each student team serves in a pseudo-consulting capacity. Each client organization offers a current problem or design project of mutual interest for each student team to solve. Thus, the students are challenged to solve a real problem in cooperation with the organization's project supervisor.

The faculty instructors identify suitable projects at companies or organizations in the surrounding area. The objective for students in ISE 4510 is to use all appropriate tools learned in ISE or other courses to provide the organization with a recommendation for the best solution to the problem at hand.

Students apply all appropriate University resources to problem solutions. These resources include libraries, computers, laboratories, faculty personnel, and the combined knowledge of team members as acquired in educational and practical experiences.

Final grades for ISE 4510 reflect the instructors' evaluation of both individual and group performance in all of the technical and managerial aspects of the design of productive systems. These grades will be adjusted by the student's evaluation of the cooperative performance by each team member.

In addition to midterm and final presentations to the client, a dress rehearsal presentation is conducted at the end of the project for a panel composed of faculty and/or practicing industrial engineers. ISE students are also invited to attend.

Recent Projects:

• Warehouse and Order Picking Systems Study (Phoenix USA, Inc.)
• Improved Inventory Control System Study (Phoenix USA, Inc.)
• Process Improvement in TTU Admissions (Tennessee Tech)
• Financial Aid System Study (Tennessee Tech)
• Efficient Routing Scheme (Budweiser of Cookeville)
• Dock Layout for Relay Freight (Averitt Express)
• Development of a Plan for Integrated Systems Laboratory (Tennessee Tech)
• Redesign of Saturn's Rear Access Door Subassembly Area (Saturn Corporation)
• Sequencing and Kitting Project (Saturn Corporation)
• Development of a Modified Kanban System (Flexial Corporation)
• Evaluation of a New Sunroof Assembly Line for Nissan Altima  (Nissan Motor Mfg. Co)
• Toyota Muffler Line Changeover Improvement Project (Tenneco Automotive)
• Coil Handling Reengineering (Lennox)
• Process Improvement Study at Cookeville Regional Medical Center (CRMC)
• Continuous Improvement Study of Line #224 (TRW)
• Saturn S-Series Camber Alignment Study (Saturn Corporation)
• Foam-cutting Process Improvement Study (MasterCraft Boat Company)
• Improvement of the Quality Control and Vendor Validation Process (Phoenix USA)
• Integration of the Nissan Altima and Nissan Maxima Rear Suspension Production (Yorozu Automotive)
• Manual Shipping Improvement Project (Dell Computers)
• Capacity Analysis and Process Improvement of Dell's Distribution Center (Dell Computers)
• Process Improvement of Picking Operations (Dana Distribution Center)

Proposing ISE Student Projects

To initiate a project or for additional information on the Design Internship Program, contact the ISE Department or specifically contact the Department Chair.