Four Student Teams Tackle Four Projects for John Deere
Senior design projects are a great way for engineering students to tackle a “real-world” challenge during their time on campus, giving them an idea of what they might expect when they enter the work force.
Typically, a company will seek the opportunity to partner with a small group of students to help find a solution to a particular pressing need.
This spring, ISE students and John Deere scaled efforts up massively, with four teams of five students each tackling separate projects for the iconic machinery, heavy equipment, and agricultural tool producer, tackling issues as wide ranging as from manufacturing analytics to the decals that go on the machines themselves.
“Having four student teams working toward their own goals, but as part of an overall effort for one sponsoring company is certainly unique,” said Bill Hicks, who helps pair potential industry partners with student teams. “It has been great watching each individual team come up with solutions to tackle the specific problem they are each trying to improve.”
It’s a situation that has proven beneficial to John Deere as well.
“Initially, I was searching for a regional resource to help facilitate an effort that we were planning at our facility in Greeneville,” said James Carter, John Deere lean project manager. “A google search landed me on the website for the UT Center of Industrial Services, which, combined with fortunate timing, led to an invitation to attend the 2022 Senior Design Showcase. I was highly impressed by the projects that were showcased and the energy and passion the student teams demonstrated when describing their projects, so I immediately began to brainstorm project ideas for our facility.”
Carter said potential projects were ranked based on their business impact and potential for success by student-led teams. He added that John Deere was very intentional about identifying projects where they had tried multiple solutions that failed, and that the concept of having engineering students produce fresh ideas was exciting.
He went on to say that the most significant observation for him was the students’ efforts to gain empathy towards the problem they are trying to solve, that teams made their projects success personal.
“I’ve seen them in our facility on weekends, late evenings through the week, and they never miss a planned meeting or email,” Carter said. “It’s been great to be part of their growth and development over the last 2 semesters. I speak for all the project champions in that we are going to miss working with this group of students.”
Carter said John Deere’s expectations with the projects were not to end the project with a final solution—although that would be a bonus if it worked out that way— but rather what they wanted was a fresh look at some reoccurring issues and new, creative ideas on how they might evolve a student team proposal into a long-term solution.
He said all four teams have demonstrated excellent proposals to the problems they were presented, and that, based on what he has seen from each team, all four projects are going to deliver a positive impact to their operations.
“This has been a great experience, he said. “We are already collecting project ideas for consideration for next year. The Department of Industrial Engineering at UT has been great to work with. Through the senior design efforts, we have been able to extend our partnerships with both the University and UTCIS into a variety of other services for consideration.
“I would highly recommend to other business to consider senior design sponsorship.”
Project Overviews
The four teams, and their project goals, plans, thoughts about the experience, and thoughts about what the opportunity meant to their educational path as stated by their respective team captains can be found by clicking on the project titles below.
Team Captain
Kaitlyn Daniels
Team
Hesham Ahmad, Kaleigh Basillo, Ayla Brown, Gemma Del Buono
Project Goal
The stated goal of this project is to improve the efficiency of the employee shift selection process with an updated automatic tool system that takes into account employees’ preferences and experience for shift type and area. This will increase efficiency and reduce time spent manually executing the current method. Our goal is to reduce the time this takes by at least 75 percent from 400 hours per year to 100 hours per year.
Project Plan
We formulated a plan to tackle that task by meeting every week with John Deere to plan and evaluate our given task. We aimed to decrease human error and hours of training required to teach someone else to complete the task of using the current methods by replacing manual methods with an automated data entry method. Implement software that is more user-friendly than excel. The plan will encompass cost savings by eliminating hours of training by assigning shifts to those who have the most experience as well as decreasing training hours to those learning to assign shifts. John Deere has estimated that the manual process requires around 400 hours a year, which could fluctuate with changes in business needs. The goal is to reduce the time assigning shifts by at least 75 percent from 400 hours per year to 100 hours per year. We could meet business needs timelier if this process did not require that the list be manually resorted, per the seniority rules, every time business scenarios change. We plan to improve this process from manual to updated with a 75 percent decrease in time by May of 2023. Our team is expected to create a new tool for the automated positioning of employees. This tool will include an algorithm that evaluates data input to produce shift assignments for hourly employees based on a number of factors given in employees’ data. Another deliverable is an automated method of gathering such data from hourly employees. Another deliverable that will be included is a written guide on how to adjust and use the algorithm so that employees will not need excessive training in order to use and adjust the inputs of the algorithm. The process of assigning shifts to hourly employees as well as the deliverables listed will be complete by May of 2023.
Thoughts about experience?
Some thoughts that we have had from this experience is that we faced a lot of various difficulties whether that was illness or roadblocks; however, we overcame these through effective communication. We learned python code from this opportunity. We made sure to carefully follow all rules given by John Deere such as the priority hierarchy for scheduling, using only approved applications of specific tools outside of Excel supporting Office 365, and ensuring the sustainability of the tool’s upkeep through SWI for how to keep it functioning after we graduate. We also had to learn to overcome numerous scheduling conflicts for online and personal meetings and we dealt with economic problems of no funding to use software outside of Microsoft Office Project which originally limited our options. Overall, we learned from our mistakes as we experienced constraints of time, money, environmental aspects, and sustainability.
How has this helped your ISE education?
Working on this project complemented and impacted our ISE educational path because we all got to obtain a new skill of python coding which will be valuable in our careers as industrial and system engineers. Coordination between our project team and John Deere is essential to the success of the project. The John Deere team has committed to responding in a timely manner to any questions or issues our team may face. Each team member is aware of their duty to ask for help or clarification immediately when they are uncertain of what the project requires. Each team member also understands that this project is collaborative, and we all are determined to work together as a team. This commitment and coordination between our project team and the John Deere group are critical for addressing any unclear objectives or issues that may arise during the completion of the assignment. Project success under a short deadline depends greatly on timely and effective communication between our team and the seniors and everyone involved understands the importance of this interaction and has committed to the above.
Team Captain
Jenifer Rodriguez
Team
Kalpaj Kotta, Paul Mercer, Benjamin Northern, Erin Stone
Project Goal
Create a dashboard that John Deere can use to monitor operator and station performance at their Greenville facility. John Deere, as a company, aims to improve productivity by 2-3 percent annually, and they hope to use the dashboard as a resource to meet that goal.
Project Plan
Our senior design and project management classes taught us about creating project charters, schedule, and scope management plans. During the process of creating the management plans, we took the time to understand the actual demands of the project. We created a Gantt chart to visualize our time frame and provide a guideline for completing the project. From there, we also made a work breakdown structure; in the first phase, we focused on creating the management plans, then we worked on organizing the data we received and tried to find a way to split the data we needed. The next phase is creating the dashboard in PowerBi, and the last step would be integrating the dashboard in John Deere’s system.
Thoughts about experience?
The biggest thing I have taken away from this project is that anything is possible if you’re willing to take the time to learn and ask for help. My team and I were inexperienced with PowerBi, and taking on the project felt intimidating. I had worked in PowerBi in my previous co-op; however, the Dashboard was already created, and I had never made a dashboard from the beginning. Professor Hicks really emphasized using our department’s resources, especially our professors and TAs. They have been so helpful and have guided our team in the right direction. Our team is especially grateful to Dr. Xueping Li, who helped us initially break down the data in Python, which was the first step in visualizing our data. We are currently finishing up the visuals within PowerBi and figured out how to incorporate the code in Python in our dashboard, so John Deere does not have to have multiple applications open while updating the data for the dashboard.
How has this helped your ISE education?
After I graduate, I will be working with PepsiCo as a supply chain analyst, and the majority of the work is going through data, dashboards, and reports to complete your tasks. Now that I have gone through the process of creating a dashboard and dealing with data that needed a lot of work to be split up, I have gained the confidence I need to work more within PowerBi and create dashboards from the very beginning.
Team Captain
Cerys Miller
Team
Wade Goetz, Nick Hassler, Clayton Hiatt, Charlie Sweet
Project Goal
John Deere (JD) is a well-known and well-respected company for all things including agricultural and lawn care equipment. The goal of our project is to help maintain their image and reputation with their customers by reducing the number of quality audit points from their decal application process for the riding lawn mower line.
In doing so, maintain the safety of their employees. Each riding lawn mower has 12 decals, but for our project, we are focusing on 2, the Model ID and the JD Stripe. Regarding these decals, we are focusing our efforts on removing the top priority issues concerning these decals being creases, misalignment, and squeegee/adhesion. To do this, we are creating, building, and innovating 3 new solutions and alternatives to eliminate the major inconsistencies.
Project Plan
The first step our team took in beginning this project was to visit the JD facility in Greeneville, TN while the facility was shut down before the introduction of the new season. Here, we were able to stand on the production line at the decal application workstation and have first-hand experience in putting the Model ID and John Deere Stripe on the hoods of the mowers. Being the “operator” in this scenario helped us understand the requirements of the roles and most importantly what it felt like to be there.
This visit turned out to be an incredibly helpful experience to immerse ourselves in the process and fully understand what we were tasked to accomplish. After this visit, we were able to formulate a plan and use what we have learned throughout our courses in Industrial Engineering in order to achieve it.
Since then, we’ve gone back to the facility during normal operating hours and experienced the factory floor completely alive with moving forklifts, assembly lines filled with materials, and more importantly people! We interacted with operators and were able to observe how they apply the decals. Before, we got an understanding of the process in a technical and fundamental way, but now we get a different perspective on the process. We now understand a little more about the tips and tricks that the operators have learned and how they have been trained. Those are aspects that we can implement in our options.
Before brainstorming and developing solutions, we used techniques such as root cause analysis and the house of quality to pinpoint the tools we’d use and the areas we’d focus on as well as a Gantt chart in addition to the milestones sent by JD to make sure that we were on track.
After completion of the initial project management areas, we decided IE could, in fact, stand for imagination engineers. Yes, we used our imagination combined with science and research, and background knowledge to develop these innovations for the line. We were very fortunate and grateful to have been sent a mower hood and decals in order to continue practicing and researching our alternatives.
Thoughts about experience?
Given my role in our group as the team leader, I have a different perspective than perhaps the rest of the members. In this role, I have learned so much from working on this project and also just in general.
In school, we hear all the time that communication matters. That you need to be able to write and speak well. That there are departments and centers put in place to specifically help students develop those skills to be their best versions. And all of that is true and valuable. However, what is less talked about is the ability to be a good listener and a good question-asker. And sometimes those don’t even have to be verbal. Often it’s with body language and cues. I’ve learned so much about that throughout this process.
Being the leader, I have been tasked with communicating with not only our group but also with the ISE department and our John Deere sponsors. This means I initiate conversations and set up meetings where we have discussions about our thoughts and plans.
But then we went to the facility and met with the operators, and it became more about asking specific questions and getting those answers through demonstrations. It became more important and valuable to be a good listener and observer than to verbally converse. Pay closer attention to their hands as they twist the decal to peel off the backing. Watch their body language as they perform their job. All of these are silent answers to the questions. Sometimes, they would have a few words to help describe the situation. From there, I took those notes and wrote the observations down and we continued moving forward.
How has this helped your ISE education?
Working on this project has impacted my ISE path because it has reminded me of all the aspects that I have learned and that are applicable in any industry. Although the scenarios and situations may change, I know that I am fully equipped from participating in these courses and have the curious desire to always learn more.
For example, we have learned so much about quality and what that means from amazing professors at the university, and now we have an opportunity to have an impact in a real-life quality scenario. Granted, it may not be exactly like we have learned in class, but that’s also part of it. Knowing we have the basics under our belts and now we just have to apply ourselves.
Also, this project has reminded me of how broad the genre of being an ISE is. How wonderful it is to have so many options and doors ahead yet still fall under the category of being an ISE. This complements my educational path because this project lets us use so many different aspects of what we’ve learned in classrooms and helps us focus on what we might want to do post-graduation. A very well-rounded experience.
Team Captain
Garrett Dugger
Team
Nicholas Ditullio, Taylor Gingrich, Adrien Massie, Mackenzie Robinson
Project Goal
The top level goal of the project is to decrease the amount of downtime experienced in stage nine of the paint process. When stage nine of the paint process is down the whole plant has to shut down, which cost John Deere money. The lower level goals are to decrease the number of parts that fall into the tank and to get parts out of the tank effectively without having to shut the plant down.