NBC Channel 5 news story: Southern Methodist University students focus their project on making the intersection of Fitzhugh and Travis streets in Dallas safer for pedestrians. Senior Design team Andrew Brunts, Hailey Phelps, and David Smith built a simulation of Fitzhugh Avenue traffic to evaluate configuration alternatives for a neighborhood improvement organization.
SabreAirlineSolutionsoffersdatasolutionsandsoftwaretoaidairlinessellproducts,marketthemselves,andoperateefficiently. The company would like to provide travelersegmentationservicesfortheircustomerreservationsystemtosupportvariousmarketingprograms.(Segmentation involves classifying prospective buyers into groups, or segments, to create products specifically for each segment.) This project requiredcreatingsegmentationrulesthatclassifyticket purchase data in this manner.
The senior design teamreplicatedthedatatocreatepre-bookingandpost-bookingresults.Pre-bookingsegmentationwillshowclustersthatdonotincludevariablessuchasfareandtraveltime,becausethesecan’tbeknownuntilafterbooking.Ontheotherhand,post‐bookingdatawillprovidesegmentsthatincludepurchasesmade.Pre-bookingclusterscouldbeusedtomakepromotionsforcustomerswhilebooking,andpost-bookingclusterscouldbeusedtomakepromotionsafterbooking.
Theteamusedk-meansclusteringmethod and theR softwaretofindtheoptimalnumberofclustersinthedata and assist Sabre with thedesignofgoodfareproducts.Forexample,ifanairlinehascreatedaticketfareproductforaspecificmarketlikebusiness‐travelers,the team’ssegmentation rulescanconfirmwhethertheproductiswell‐definedandwell-targeted.
Client: Frito Lay
Team: Matt Alfano, Brittany Masi
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2010
Documents: Presentation, Report, Video
The project is to design and create an out-of-stock inventory tool that is user-friendly and able to historically scan data while predicting inventory shortfall at the club/SKU level. More features of this project include determining what Inventory is needed by club/SKU and determine delivery frequency by club. We decided that only these opportunities fell into the scope of our project.
After consolidating all of the available information into one database we removed unnecessary tables to increase the processing speed of analyzing the product “Spy Reports” generated by their current database queries. We analyzed two of the highest-demand product lines that Frito Lay stocks at Sam’s Clubs nationwide. These two products are Smart Mix and Variety Mix. Read more…
Client: Frito Lay Team: Rodrigo Cantu, Sergio Hueck, Rafael Virzi Faculty Advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2012 Documents: Presentation, Report, Video
Gamesa, a subsidiary of Frito-Lay, is a Mexican Cookie company that sells its product in many different countries, including the United States. Their products, which includes different types of cookies and crackers, are targeted to the Mexican population. The company’s United States sales force consists of 38 representatives in 16 different regions, organized by their different routes to market, location of warehouses, and population density. Today, they dominate the U.s. Hispanic cookie market occupying 50 percent of the market.
The problem we address for Gamesa is: should they should deploy more sales representatives and, if so, where would their optimal locations be? With the current economic recession and the entering of Gamesa’s main competitor, Bimbo, sales have been dropping in the different regions. This resulted in Gamesa asking themselves if they needed a bigger sales force. They also wanted to know what regions could be good to add representatives in the future depending on the migration of the population or the strategy of the competition. Read more…
The stories of three Senior Design projects from the clients’ point of view, including North Texas Food Bank, Texas Department of Transportation, and Southwest Airlines:
Client: Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Team: Stephen Beckert, Brandon Joslin, Pierce, Meier Faculty Advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2010 Documents: Final Report, Presentation
Lockheed Martin presented us with a project more exciting than we could ever imagine: aiding the research into ways to model the effects of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). EMP is extremely devastating and can be caused by both natural and man-made events. EMP primarily affects electronic devices, rendering them useless or destroyed. Since the United States is heavily dependent on electronic interfaces, we are extremely vulnerable to this effect. In addition to this vulnerability to the EMP effect, the United States has a complex system of connected critical infrastructures that have not been studied as interrelated systems. This presents a major problem, how can one forecast the possible failures of such a massive complex system? Read more…
Client: Methodist Dallas Medical Center Team: Kyle Chester, Kristin Evanto, and Emily Gray Faculty Advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2010 Documents: Final Report, Presentation
A “hub” of activity at MDMC is the Outpatient Services department. Outpatient Services exists to serve the needs of physicians and surgeons alike with routine x-rays, blood draws to test for Tuberculosis or other ailments, or diagnostics to assess patient health. Many patients who come to Outpatient Services are preparing for surgery and thus need to undergo preliminary screens such as blood draws and EKGs.
The focus of this project is the observation and analysis of the administrative and technical operations within the laboratory component of Outpatient Services. Outpatient Services aims to reduce its patient wait times throughout the entire duration of a patient’s stay in Outpatient Services. Management has expressed a desire to reduce patient wait times such that 95% of all patients wait less than 15 minutes for the Outpatient laboratory department. Read more…
Capstone is a privately owned investment advisory firm in Houston, TX that offers privately managed accounts to achieve client’s financial objectives. They currently manage over $3.8 billion in assets for about 3,000 different clients. They provide products and services through three distribution channels: brokers/advisors, institutions/corporations, and high-net-worth individuals. Revenues are generated by marginal product fees associated with assets under management allocated by product.
Capstone has in place a detailed budgeting process but desires to expand the process to include financial modeling to measure profitability by product. Our goal for this project is to develop a model that would calculate existing profitability on assets under management by product. Our second goal is to develop an optimization model that takes into account the revenues and expenses associated with sales of existing products versus the revenues and expenses associated with the development of new products. The final output of the optimization model is to identify the most profitable mix for new product sales. Read more…
The North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) is a non-profit hunger relief organization that distributes donated, purchased, and prepared foods through a network of feeding programs in 13 North Texas counties. From these counties nearly 700,000 individuals live below the federal poverty level. The North Texas Food Bank’s mission is to passionately pursue a hunger-free community; more specifically their “Close-the-Gap” initiative is to make 50 million meals available annually.1 This project seeks to solve one problem at the food bank that will hopefully help the organization achieve this goal more efficiently and quickly. Read more…
Client: Methodist Dallas Medical Center
Client: North Texas Food Bank