Client: Lake Highlands Soccer Association
Team: Sherif Khalifa
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Barr
Year: 2008
Documents: Final Report (Word), Presentation (PPT)
The scheduling of sports competitions is a challenge for both professional teams, such as the NBA, to amateur leagues. In this project an effective strategy to model sports scheduling is developed.
Lake Highlands Soccer Association was formed in 1972 to promote the sport of Soccer in Dallas’ Lake Highlands area and throughout North Texas and serves as the “Home Association” for about 1,800 youth players from neighborhoods in the Dallas and Richardson school districts. The LHSA’s Boys League Director provided data that is needed in developing their schedules and a constraint-programming model was implemented that meets all their requirements and delivers a far more effective solution.
Similar to many leagues, Lake Highland Soccer Association uses an inefficient method of scheduling to determine all leagues games. There is no model in place, and schedules are done manually, leading to many wasted hours to determine a schedule that may be suitable to the each league’s constraints. Read more…
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…
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…
Team: Kathryn Gotcher, Kyle Merino, Gregory Moran
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Siems Year: 2009
Documents: Final Report (Word), Final Presentation (PPT)
In the present global economic state, finding ways to improve a nation’s economy is vital to government leaders. The problem presented to us was to study various political institutions and policies of the world’s nations and determine which measures, if any, are accurate predictors of economic health and growth. In particular, we were interested in the effect that measures of free trade would have upon the economy. Read more…
Client: 
Alix Partners
Team: Matthew Hale
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2008
Documents: Final report, final presentation
The main goal of this project was to create a tool that would assist midsize companies in their selection of transportation bids. The tool needed to be easy to use, scalable, reusable, and distributable. In order to accomplish these goals, Microsoft Access was selected as the platform to handle the back-end tasks. By developing a clean front-end for Access, we were able to meet the ease of use requirement while harnessing the power of Access to scale and be reusable. 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: Sabre Holdings: Sabre Airline Solutions
Team: Lauren Duplantis, Hamel Husain, Francisco Villagran
Faculty advisor: Dr. Siems Year: 2003
Documents: Final report (PDF)
Our project involved working with Sabre Inc. on a problem that they were having with their system StaffPlan that is maintained by their Airline Solutions Division. StaffPlan is an Airline Solutions system that minimizes the number of check-in agents at an airport based on the time of day, queue, airline, destinations, and passenger arrival curve categories. Read more…
Client:
Team: Jay Mandyam
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2008
Documents: Final report (PDF)
In Hollywood, the Assistant Director is in charge of creating the shooting schedule and the Unit Production Manager has the task of making sure that each and every crew position is filled for every day of shooting. On smaller, independent, low-budget movies, however, scheduling is at the mercy of the actors and the crew since they usually work for free or for a small stipend. It thus falls on the producer to create the shooting schedule based on people’s availabilities. Typically, the “easiest” way to approach this is to do it manually, with a lot of guessing, testing, and revising. 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…
