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…
Categories: Final report, Forecasting, Inventory management, Manufacturing, Operations, Planning, Presentation, Statistical Methods, Transportation, Uncategorized, United States, Video Tags:
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…
Categories: Final report, Forecasting, Manufacturing, Marketing, Operations, Optimization, Presentation, Real estate, Simulation, Statistical Methods, Uncategorized, United States, Video Tags:
Client: Frito Lay
Team: Javier Gonzalez, Fernando Sada, Marcelo Sada
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2011
Documents: Final Report, Presentation
In order to satisfy the large Hispanic market in the United States, Frito Lay imports products manufactured in Mexico by Gamesa, a sister company to Frito Lay due to the fact that they are both owned by PepsiCo. Gamesa has plants all across Mexico, having the main ones located in Celaya, Vallejo, Obregon and Monterrey. In the past, all products being imported into the U.S were produced in Obregon, a city in Northwestern Mexico. As of today, the Hispanic population has dispersed all across the country, increasing Gamesa’s market to a large portion of it. Gamesa’s products are now being distributed all the way from California, to Texas, and onto the East Coast and Midwest. Imports have increased so much that in order to satisfy the demand, Gamesa has started producing all across Mexico for exports. Read more…
Client: Pratt & Whitney Engine Services
Team: Michael DeVore
Faculty advisor: Barr Year: 2004
Documents: Final report (Word)
The Pratt and Whitney Addison Service Center is a unique situation involving rental engines and their repair. These engines are delivered by a 3rd party carrier and must be checked over and repaired if necessary. At that point the engine must be sent back out to either the customer who rented it or to another intermediate step. The Addison, TX Service Center Manager requested help in optimizing the employee’s time spent on these rental engines. He wanted to know what could be done to improve Service Center response time and maximize output. Read more…
Client: Lennox Industries
Team: Diana Batten, Maddie Kamp
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2011
Documents: Final Report, Presentation
Lennox Industries is a residential and commercial heating and air-conditioning company with a 13-15% market share in about 80 countries. Lennox is unique in that they operate as both the manufacturer and distributor of their products selling directly to their customers, typically contractors.
This project identified correlations between customers’ buying patterns and their attrition, or loss of their business. Based on transaction-level data of 4,500 customers over a three-year period, an early-warning model was developed to signal the potential loss of a customer and enable Lennox to act preemptively. The analytics were based on a ranking procedure based on key indicators and a Markov chain analysis with categorical transition probabilities derived from historical data. With this model encapsulated in spreadsheet form with the ability to customize the analysis geographically and seasonally, the results give Lennox management a new tool to maintain their current customers and evaluate new markets.
Client: Heeling Sports Limited
Team: Gustavo Carrere and Marcus Klintmalm
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2005
Documents: Final Report (PDF)
The Heeling Sports Limited is a Dallas-based footwear designer, manufacturer and distributor. The Company’s mission is to generate new and exciting footwear utilizing contemporary and progressive styles with comfort-enhancing performance features. To generate new footwear style HSL will introduce one product per year through acquisition or in-house development.
Extensive interviews and observation lead us to several bottlenecks in the order process. Most often these bottlenecks concerned procedure rather than anything else. There are many simple, no-cost options to optimizing the Heelys order process. Read more…
Client: Williams Technologies, Inc.
Team: Erik Wikstrom, Jeff Cate
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 1996
Documents: Final report (PDF)
Williams Technologies Incorporated (WTI), intends to increase customer satisfaction by decreasing time-to-market of its products, namely re-manufactured transmissions. WTI believes this goal can be accomplished by developing a more efficient shipping system, while minimizing the cost-to-market. This new system may be developed in-house or outsourced. Therefore, WTI needs an in-house solution that can be compared to those submitted by outside sources. Read more…
Client: Frito-Lay, Inc. and Sam’s Club
Team: Christian Edison, Ashley Mills, Stephen Rumpler
Faculty advisor: Dr. Siems Year: 2005
Documents: Final report (PDF)
Working with the Frito-Lay Supply Chain Department, our team has found an improved inventory process that will increase in-stock performance at Sam’s Clubs. Sam’s Club demands a 99.8% in-stock performance. Currently, Frito-Lay is not meeting this demand, therefore improvements must be made.
Analyzing Frito-Lay’s current inventory replenishment process, we discovered several problems. Some of these problems included inconsistencies in taking inventory at the clubs, negligence of inventory worksheets, and lack of communication. After further analysis, we discovered that forecasting more accurately would prevent some of these problems. There was a new challenge: finding a method of forecasting the new product line, Pick ‘N Pack. With very little historical sales, it was difficult to forecast sales. Read more…
Client: Alcon Inc.
Team: C. Davis, C. Ngo, D. Nguyen, S. Ramdhanny, B. Long
Faculty advisor: Barr Year: 2004
Documents: Final report (PDF), final presentation (PPT)
Alcon, Inc. has successfully progressed into a research-and-development-driven, global pharmaceutical company focused on eye care. At their headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, Alcon operates two manufacturing plants that produce more than 10,000 unique products. In October 2003, Alcon closed their Madrid (Spain) manufacturing plant and assigned its manufacturing responsibilities to Fort Worth. The combined product lines have currently been in production with unacceptable inefficiencies, including loss in whitestock production and production time, packaging and labeling difficulties as well as capacity and scheduling issues.
The Southern Methodist University undergraduate engineering students (Team Alcon) volunteered to review current manufacturing operations and propose process improvements with the goal of achieving significant cost savings. The sole purpose of this project will be to observe, develop, evaluate, and implement management science concepts that will significantly support and impact efficiency levels. Read more…
