OREM 4395 – Senior Design Archive

The North Texas Food Bank project is featured on WFAA-TV, Channel 8:

Client: US Treasury-Federal Reserve Bank
Team:  Morgan Brunz, Brittany McCluskey
Faculty advisor: Dr. Siems, Barr
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has a call center that responds to customer requests to change from receiving checks in the mail to direct deposit. The center’s call volume varies throughout the month and day. They have hired 23 permanent employees, and on a daily basis, they hire a different amount of temporary employees. Our goal is to determine the number of temporary employees they should hire each day and those employees’ schedules. We  seek to minimize cost and maximize customer service. Read more…

Client: Dallas Police Department
Team:  Kyle E. Kidd, Eric B. Lakey, S. Tyler Nau
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1995
Documents:   Final report

The purpose of this study is to analyze historical data on the Dallas Police Department’s First Offender Programs in order to determine the effectiveness of the programs, and to develop a model to predict the probability of the program being successful for an offender. Using graphing techniques, statistical techniques and operations research techniques the sample was analyzed to reach conclusions about the efficiency of the two programs. Read more…

Client: Towers Perrin, TeePee  Convenience Stores
Team: Eric Mentz, Greg Meurer
Faculty: Dr. Richard Barr      Year: 1995
Documents: Final report

Tee Pee is a United-States-based convenience store chain (renamed for confidentiality reasons) consisting of approximately 4000 stores. Tee Pee is in the process of developing a system for their individual store managers that would help them to adequately staff their stores based on cus­tomer flow and satisfaction.

The consultants at Towers Perrin formulated a manual model, which was developed into the Store Staffing Tool. We saw an opportunity to automate this model and develop an algorithm that would automatically assign employees to certain hours of the week, based on availability and competency. The resulting output of this algorithm not only shows the work schedule for the week; it also shows the staffing levels required, the total number of labor hours needed during the week, the overall labor cost of running that store for one week, and it highlights which employees are not being  used adequately. Read more…

Client: Baylor University Medical Center
Team:  Amy Haller, Chris Johnson, Christian Puryear, Adam Saucedo
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr     Year: 1996
Documents:   Final report

Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) is a downtown-Dallas-based hos­pital with many satellite locations around the metroplex. In northeast Tarrant county, BIJMC acquired a small hospital in Grapevine. The Grapevine Hos­pital is a licensed 104-bed facility offering both in- and out-patient services. The Emergency Department (ED) at Baylor Grapevine is a six-bed unit cater­ing primarily to urgent patients rather than trauma patients. Currently, this department is undergoing major changes in staffing and physical size. A new facility is under construction and will be completed in September 1996.

The administrators of the Grapevine Hospital recognized a potential prob­lem and requested a tool to accurately simulate the work done in the ED. The purpose of this project is two-fold: 1) to determine the impact of staffing and/or facility changes on the efficiency of the ED, and 2) to gain a better understand­ing of the patient flow through the ED in order to reduce the occurrence of bottlenecks in the new facility. Consistently, the ED sees its largest number of patients on the weekend. On average, the ED services 110 patients each weekend.