{"690060":{"#nid":"690060","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Senior Design Teams Showcase Projects at Expo; Contact Point Win ISyE Prize ","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAfter months of hard work, 32 groups (including one Create-X team) capped their undergraduate journeys through the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.isye.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EH. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering\u003C\/a\u003E (ISyE) by presenting their Senior Design Projects at Capstone Design Expo. The expo featured teams from 12 different schools at the Institute, displaying innovative ways to solve problems.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EISyE brought the most teams of any school to the expo, where the senior design teams had the opportunity, for the first time, to present their problems and solutions to the public. In the packed McCamish Pavilion, teams erected their poster boards and demos, ready to explain their work to other interested students, donors, parents, and leaders from other schools at the Institute.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe projects spanned industries from aluminum smelters and artisan popsicle companies, NCAA football stadium queues and hospital emergency rooms, Atlanta nonprofits and Marine Corps operations. The breadth reflected both the versatility of industrial engineering and the program\u0027s reach into Atlanta\u0027s business community and beyond. One team, \u201cShift Happens,\u201d showed how they improved dispatcher scheduling for American Airlines. Their solution takes employees\u2019 preferences, flight schedules, the dispatcher\u2019s flexible day use, and training days into account to produce an improved schedule that minimizes the number of understaffed and overstaffed shifts. The scale of their solution was enormous.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen we combine that all into our one model, we have three shifts to account for: morning, evening, and midnight. We have eight regions to account for with American Airlines. It\u2019s a massive model: twenty-one million variables, thirty-five million constraints,\u201d explained \u201cShift Happens\u201d team member Colin Fravel.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWith their improved schedule, they expected a 73% reduction in unmet demand where there is no dispatch to work a flight. By better distributing dispatchers, they also estimate that their solution will save American Airlines $1.3 million dollars in reduced staffing costs over the course of a year.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnother team, \u201cBuzz on the Beach,\u201d worked with company VayKLife \u2014 a guest engagement and beach gear rental platform \u2014 to optimize transportation resource usage by reducing the number of trucks required, total miles traveled, labor hours, fuel consumption, and reliance on rental equipment during peak seasons. The team developed a routing model that accounts for inventory availability and vehicle capacity constraints, enabling the company to maintain its current level of service while operating more efficiently with fewer resources.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIn peak season, we were able to see the savings of nine, almost ten thousand dollars in Charleston alone. And then in the off-season, we\u2019re able to save almost 13.7 thousand dollars, just in Charleston,\u201d said Rohan Prabhuram, one of the \u201cBuzz on the Beach\u201d team members.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt the end of the expo, industry judges gave \u201cContact Point\u201d the Industrial Engineering monodisciplinary award. Team members Skyler Malmberg, Visakhi Miriyapalli, Nick Nist, Hannah Mathew, Justin Collins, Pardha Kanchiraju, Esha Pentakota, and Saba Ansari developed a work-process solution for Elevate Solutions Group.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir new process improves the way Elevate Solutions Group loads trays with contact lenses, as specified by their clients. The old process involved four to six workers loading individual trays, manual sorting, and long travel times between steps. \u201cContact Point\u2019s\u201d solution included constructing a new workstation for loading trays, a handheld scanner, custom software, and a tray attachment to make loading easier. They also counterintuitively decreased the number of workers at a time to just one.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe were able to note an almost up to 50% decrease in time usage per tray,\u201d Collins explained. \u201cWe estimated this will save them over $126,000 over the first year on just this one product line that we\u0027re working with.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMost of that cost savings came from labor, which they reduced by an average of 9 hours per client order. The team\u2019s impact, their client\u2019s satisfaction, and the rapid adoption of their solution were decisive factors in awarding this team the top prize.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor most of the 237 students in the ISyE senior design groups, the expo was the most public moment of their time throughout this experience. They showed not just a semester\u2019s work, but what four years of study, dedication, and determination look like. This final event was the culmination of all the steps it took for each one of them to become a Georgia Tech industrial engineer.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe ISyE teams covered a wide range of industrial engineering applications; some worked to improve their clients\u2019 inventory management, while others designed new processes to reduce patient wait times, allocate staffing resources, and shorten travel times.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Spring 2026 Capstone Design Expo featured teams from 12 different schools at the Institute, displaying innovative ways to solve problems and challenge the norm."}],"uid":"36736","created_gmt":"2026-04-29 20:39:14","changed_gmt":"2026-04-30 18:11:52","author":"ebrown386","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-04-29T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-04-29T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"680115":{"id":"680115","type":"image","title":"ISyE Monodisciplinary Winner - Team Contact Point (Spring 2026 Capstone Design Expo)","body":null,"created":"1777495165","gmt_created":"2026-04-29 20:39:25","changed":"1777495165","gmt_changed":"2026-04-29 20:39:25","alt":"ISyE Monodisciplinary Winner - Team Contact Point (Spring 2026 Capstone Design Expo)","file":{"fid":"264355","name":"IMG_1442.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/04\/29\/IMG_1442.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/04\/29\/IMG_1442.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":935758,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/04\/29\/IMG_1442.jpg?itok=PZSZtoYf"}}},"media_ids":["680115"],"related_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.isye.gatech.edu\/engage\/engage-isye-students\/senior-design-clients","title":"More information relating to ISyE Senior Design "},{"url":"https:\/\/www.capstone.gatech.edu\/","title":"Georgia Tech Capstone Expo"}],"groups":[{"id":"1250","name":"Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS)"},{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"},{"id":"1243","name":"The Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (SCL)"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39541","name":"Systems"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EParker Avery, Student Writing Assistant\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003ETiffany Ng, Senior Design Student Assistant\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}