Why Systems Design Project?

In ensuring that some of the above educational objectives are satisfied, one of the core modules offered to the students is the IE3100 Systems Design Project. The objective of the design project is to provide an opportunity for students to gain practical design experience in an actual industry setting. Such experience will also provide the students with a broader scope of industrial engineering by applying a range of IE-related concepts rather than concentrating on one particular subject area.

The module provides the students opportunity to

1. Study, formulate and analyze an actual industrial problem with the goal of recommending a design solution that is practical.
2. Apply knowledge learnt in the classroom to an actual problem assigned.
3. Acquire intangible attributes such as working in a team and practical experience that cannot be taught in a classroom environment.
4. Practise and improve the skills of technical report writing and oral presentation.

Companies' participation and support for this module are therefore important for these values to be imparted to the students effectively. The Systems Design Project module is carried out over a period of two semesters. It is offered at the beginning of every academic year which starts in early August and the work will span approximately nine months. The nature of the work is on resolving a specific problem or completing a specific project and is not intended for carrying out day-to-day operations.

During the course of the project, students are not allowed to receive compensation for work done. However, companies are encouraged to provide typical office facilities such as photocopying, printing, and in some cases, supplies and travel expenses to the students.

Benefits for companies/sponsors

1. Organizations can have real cases or problems studied by a group of industrial engineering students working for experience and academic credit instead of money. These students may bring fresh perspective or “out-of-box” thinking to old industrial problems.
2. Problems or cases will be examined over an 8-9 month period, thus increasing the possibility of developing novel solutions which are implementable.
3. Documentation of the study, complete with the problem, possible solutions and recommendation, will be provided to the organization. A presentation to the management can also be arranged.
4. Through this arrangement, organization can assess the capability of each student objectively and select the best candidates for future employmen
5. Participating organizations help to promote and provide better education to future engineers, contributing to the progress of society.
6. The organizations can express goodwill toward NUS and its students.

Role of Sponsor

1. Identify the needs or opportunities
2. Have a session with the student group to discuss on the possible scope of the project which can be reasonably completed within 9 months (about 200 hours per student).
3. Identify a liaison who is able to provide group guidance, operations and economic information, and plant access. This person will most likely interact with group members in the subsequent follow-ups.
4. Participate in providing feedback on the students' work.

Examples of Possible Projects

1. A logistics company wants to evaluate the effectiveness of their vehicle deployment policy and to study the possible improvement through out-sourcing the jobs.
2. A manufacturing company which implements JIT wants to find a better production plan to meet customer demands.
3. An integrator wants to design a supply chain process which involves allocating emergency spare parts to different warehouses so as to meet the tight service level requirement with the least amount of total inventory.
4. A hospital or a bank wants to improve the waiting times of customers.
5. A manufacturing company wants to introduce quality control methods to improve production yield.
6. A terminal operator wants to organize their warehouse layouts and materials handling systems so as to improve the flow of materials and resources.
7. A company plans to improve its new product development process through business process re-engineering (BPR) and industry best practice.

Non-disclosure

At the end of the project, each team is to submit a final report. The final report would contain information such as the background of the company, problem description and motivation, methodologies/approaches, comparison of design alternatives and recommendations. As the work may contain information that is sensitive, this report will not be made available to public other than for examination and accreditation purposes.

We also hope to publish a sanitized version of the report for public access with the purpose of helping students become familiar with the process of the system design project, and for use as potential case studies incorporated in relevant modules. This will only be carried out with the companies' or sponsors' consent. The companies or sponsors can refuse public access of the report for any reasons.

Overhead Cost

The department is committed to provide the necessary support in software, hardware and facilities, to students undertaking the systems design projects to ensure that these projects are carried out smoothly and effectively. As the industrial strength software requires annual licensing fees and the hardware involves capital cost, companies participating in this project will need contribute a nominal sum S$2,000 per project to NUS to help defray the overhead cost in department