OREM 4395 – Senior Design Archive

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…

Client: Carrollton Concentra
Team: Daniel Olivares, Beverly Ross, Devin Kyles
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2011
Documents: Final Report, Presentation

Concentra presented the problem of cross-staffing some of its employees throughout its centers. The problem addresses a potential decision of staffing methods of which the options were to staff to the market or create a cross-staffing model. These decisions relied upon the variability of patient visits among the centers and the ability to schedule based on future forecasted patient visits. Ultimately, the question was to find if there is an opportunity to staff across all centers or must it be dynamically adjusted based on forecasting by center. A solution to this problem would potentially decrease patient wait times and turnaround times (a patient’s check-in time to checkout time), idle times in which staff members are not performing any duties, and times in which centers experience a heavier traffic flow. Read more…

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: Capstone Asset Management Co.
Team: Mallory Harrison, Natalie Jaroski
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr   Year: 2010
Documents: Final report (PDF), Presentation (PDF)

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…

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.

Team:  Julianna LaFerney, Casey O’Brien
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2009
Documents: Final Report (Word), Final Presentation (PPT)

Telecommunications industry is one of the most profitable and rapidly developing industries in the world and it is regarded as an indispensable component of the worldwide utility and services sector.  In recent years, the number of mergers and acquisitions in Telecom Sector has been increasing significantly, and this event study explores mergers and acquisitions in the United States’ telecommunications industry. The study analyzes the history of mergers and acquisitions in the telecommunications industry using market and event study modeling while using the Verizon and Alltel merger as the case study. Read more…

Client: Microtune Inc.
Team: Andrew Bass, Chris Ginder, Shan Zaidi
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems
Year: 2009
Documents: Final Report (Word), Final Presentation (PPT)

The problem our team faced was how to account for the financial impact of project delays in product development. Microtune had a product in the market and a new product was under consideration to replace the existing product. The goal was to determine the value of the new product to the firm. In order to generate a cost/benefits analysis for the implementation of a product we developed a series of models in Excel to account for various uncertainties. Read more…

Client:
Team: Emily Moravec, Megan Siems, Christine Van Horn
Faculty advisor:  Dr. Siems  Year: 2009
Documents: Final report (Word), Final presentation (PPT)

Although our client is a world leader in casual dining, the company experienced a decrease in overall customer traffic from one year to the next at one of the specific casual dining brands. As the company invested time and money into marketing campaigns for this restaurant chain throughout the year, they were interested in what caused the overall percent change in customer traffic from the first half of fiscal year 2008 (from now on referred to as 1HF08) to the first half of the fiscal year 2009 (1HF09) to be -3.74%. Read more…

Award Winner: Omega Rho National
Student Project Competition
Client: Quest Resource, Inc.
Team:  John Jarvis, Claudia Johnson, Liana Vetter
Faculty advisor: Barr   Year: 2004
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)

Currently, Quest guarantees about 85% of its gas through monthly contracts, while selling the remaining at the daily price. The amount to guarantee per sale point per month is a major decision within Quest. The motivation for Quest to optimize this process is two-fold. First, by paying close attention to past production, optimization can help assure that Quest will rarely produce under their monthly guarantee and will never incur a penalty for that underproduction. Second, through researching the historical relationship between Quest’s contract prices and the corresponding market prices for each month, Quest can better estimate the contract volume that will maximize revenue. Read more…