Students will work in teams of 3 and spend 10-15 hours per student working with your organization to support the development of improved quality and/or processes that your organization can execute to get results.

You will need to provide the students with a goal, issue, or gap to focus on. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, manufacturing, quality assurance, supply chain management, and customer service.

What our students could help with:

• Collect data in relation to an existing problem i.e. customer complain, late delivery, defective parts, etc. By using techniques like brainstorming, focus group, survey, etc.
• Apply SPC in a particular control chart to both service and manufacturing for both available and attribute data in order to analyze data behavior and process variation.
• Apply Process Capability study manufacturing processes in order to verify that the process is capable and risks are evaluated.
• Apply a statistically valid acceptance sampling and calculate the producer’s and consumer’s risk due to the sampling procedure.
• Create a policy and procedure for the measuring system in manufacturing and conduct Repeatability and Reproducibility gage study to validate the measuring system.
• Apply 7 quality tools i.e. fish and bone, Pareto chart, house of quality, flow chart to collect, organize and analyze data.
• Apply some management tools
• Assess/analyze risks by constructing a FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) to any service or manufacturing product/process.
• Assess the effectiveness of the current layout and design/suggest a new layout for any manufacturing or office/clinic facility.
• Review and modify or create a new purchasing policy/procedure base on the company’s needs and requirements.

Some project examples include:

• How do we reduce waste and variation and improve productivity in storerooms, office supply rooms, or production lines? (i.e. through a 5S program)
• Turn-around-time has increased and does not meet customer requirements. How can we improve turn-around time by 10%?
• The intake process for Clients/Customers has a high incomplete/error rate. How do we reduce the number of errors on the intake form?
• How can we better understand value from the customer's perspective? Students can perform Voice of the Customer/Critical to Quality analysis to determine what matters most to your customers.