Auburn’s Department of Industrial Engineering sent three groups of students on to compete in a competition held by the software company Simio — one group received second place, and the other two groups were finalists.
All juniors in industrial engineering at Auburn are required to take a class called Simulation in which they are split in to groups of four and have to solve a problem that Simio devises.
The competition is biannual and an international event open to both graduate and undergraduate student.
The Auburn team that won second place at the event went by the team name “The Sims” and was composed of four students: Kristen Failing, Price Desanctis, Rachel Buchanan and William Collins.
One of the Auburn finalist groups went by the name “JoCKS” and the students on the team were Joshua Comely, Christian Lloyd, Alexis Gentle and Katherine Browning.
The other finalist group called “InSync!” had students Helen Custodio, Madison Rolling, Victoria Stringfellow and Macie McGill on the team.
This year’s challenge was based on a problem experienced by a Fortune 500 company in which a company had two existing plane models and needed to manufacture a third.
The groups had to consider real world factors to find out how to increase production while maintaining the same initial lead-times as when the facility was only producing two models.
Helen Sappington, rising senior in industrial engineering, explained how they had to find a way to produce 25 extra new planes in the time allotted using the Simio software.
“Our solution ended up being to add a Saturday workday because the original problem had a 5-day worksheet as well as 'balance the line,' which is when you attempt to make the task at each station take the same amount of time,” Sappington said.
The students' projects were judged on a 10-item scoring system based on quality of the presentation, use of input data, modeling detail, components of the model, verification and validation, quality of animation, set of experiments, analysis of results, quality of business recommendations and the overall quality of the project.
According Victoria Stringfellow, at first the project seemed daunting because of the problem presented and having to learn how to use a new software, but after the team sat down and began to outline their approach to the challenge they became more confident.
“We learned along the way that we had to be dynamic and flexible,” Stringfellow said. “There were times we would try something and it just didn’t work, or we couldn’t find a way to make it work. Therefore, we regrouped and were able to adjust and stay on track.”
Kristen Failing, rising senior and a part of the second place team, initially was intimidated by the competition but became increasingly intrigued about how to solve the problem and became very confident in their model and results.
“Auburn’s ISE program has provided me with so many opportunities to learn and grow both personally and professionally,” Failing said. “The professor of the Simulation and Simio class, Dr. Jeffery Smith, and his TA’s gave excellent guidance by providing resources and support while also requiring us to remain independent and to answer a lot of our own questions.”
The winners of the Simio competition were awarded cash prizes totaling $3,000 and are able to show their success to potential employers.
Sappington, Stringfellow and Failing all agree that the competition helped them gain skills that will follow them throughout their time in Auburn and in whatever career they choose down the road.
“It’s started to become expected that an Auburn team will make it to the top 10,” Sappington said. “Considering that we compete with the best engineering schools in the world, you can tell that we’re getting an outstanding education here [at Auburn].”
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