9510521 Ntuen This internship project is focused on graduate students apprenticeship in industry to improve graduate students skills in analyzing problems, formulate solution methodology, and identifying critical research problems which if solved can reengineer a company's processes. This projects builds on an existing program with the sponsor company. The existing relationship is an undergraduate apprenticeship program which the PI institution has with the company. This project will make it possible to expand the apprenticeship program to graduate students. Under the graduate apprenticeship, students will conduct research on specific topics jointly determined by the PI and the industrial partner to foster innovation and creative approaches to the implementation of the company's production goals. The program will expose the graduate students to the philosophies of management, research, product development, operations, manufacturing, and marketing. Specific aspects of the apprenticeship experience will involve the students to (1) work with company engineers to analyze the current operating and manufacturing strategies and identify major areas for re-engineering initiative, (2) develop guidelines for re-engineering processes, operations, maintenance, distribution, and logistics, and (3) develop a domain specific in-house simulation model for real time performance analysis of the company's operations at various phases of manufacturing. A core element of the project is the creation of an environment in an actually industrial setting where graduate students can be challenged with real manufacturing problems. This experience can be used by the students to enhance their graduate school experiences. This experience can translate to the generation of industry motivated graduate theses research. On the other hand, the industrial partner will benefit from the fresh insights of students whose main objectives are to enhance their problem solving skills and experiences in a real industrial setting. F urthermore, the algorithms developed as part of the collaboration can prove very valuable to the industrial partner.
