What's Happening in IMSE

1. Engineering students win recognition for optimizing micro-brewery
2. Business project introduces engineering students to the big picture (December 12, 2011)
3. Dr. H. ElMaraghy - Desire for variety to shape cleaner, knowledge-driven industrial revolution, researcher says (November 24, 2010)
4. IIE Conference 2010 - Conference an Educational Experience for Students (January 18, 2010)
5. Dr. W. ElMaraghy named "Engineers Canada Fellow" - FEC - November 27, 2009
6. Transferring knowledge, training renaissance engineers focus of $1.4 million research program - Dr. H. ElMaraghy (September 25, 2009)
7. Still a future in manufacturing, says scholarship winner - Victoria Townsend (July 6, 2009 )
8. Visit by local grade schoolers an education experience in engineering (April 23, 2009)
9. Study examines how manufacturers can rapidly change product design (October 24, 2008)
10. PROGRAM UNITES STUDENT, DAINTY FOODS - Sarina Turner - (July 14th, 2008)

Engineering students Abdulqader Alsobaihi, Maria Marin, Christina Asuncion and David Impens finished second in an industrial consulting competition.

Faster than some people can sip a pint of beer, a group of UWindsor industrial engineering students were redesigning the production line of a Halifax microbrewery to help cut its costs.

Christina Asuncion, Maria Marin, David Impens and Abdulqader Alsobaihi took silver-medal honours at the Institute of Industrial Engineers Student Conference, January 21 at Dalhousie University, for their case study into Garrison Brewing, which produces craft beers.

The students toured the plant and were asked to re-arrange the bottling process to free up one of the five line workers. Hours later, they presented their ideas to judges at the conference and won a $500 second-place prize.

“Our solution was simple and will help them cut one position,” said Asuncion. “After reviewing their operations, we calculated that each person was only working six and a half hours in an eight-hour day.”

She called the competition “a great experience,” although she found the actual presentation nerve-wracking.

“A lot of the things we learn in school are theory-based,” she said. “This is more applied knowledge. You’re taking what you’ve learned and using it to solve a problem.”

In addition to the design competition, there were theoretical, simulation, and technical paper competitions. The conference also featured speakers from Canadian Tire, Hershey’s, and Trellysis with presentations in the areas of logistics, supply chain, consulting engineering, and future career possibilities for industrial engineers.
 

— Published on Feb 03, 2012

 

Monday, December 12, 2011 - Daily News

Putting together business plans gives his students an appreciation of “the big picture,” says industrial and manufacturing systems engineering professor Zbigniew Pasek.

“Hopefully, it helps them to understand their profession requires communication and collaboration skills,” he said.

Students in his second-year course, Engineering Management and Globalization, presented their projects in a business plan competition Thursday, judged by students from the Centre for Enterprise and Law.

Each team of competitors was judged on their product, marketing plans, manufacturing design, and financial projections.

“I like them to get introduced to these concepts early in their educations,” Dr. Pasek said. “It’s a road map for them to see how they fit in.”

Mechanical engineering major Kevin Curridor said the experience taught him the importance of teamwork.

“No matter what their role, everyone in the group needs to step up,” he said. “They need to have the motivation you have to succeed.”

When the dust cleared, Phoenix Comfort Solutions – designers of a backpack that allows wearers to sit without removing it – emerged on top. Teammates Luka Celic, Brady Deslippe, Abhishek Jain and Oscar Silva share a $200 cash prize.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - Daily News
Desire for variety to shape cleaner, knowledge-driven industrial revolution, researcher says

When the industrial revolution began in the 18th century, it marked a major turning point in human history, but with innovative new methods of mining, machining and production came new kinds of labour-intensive factory jobs, automation and the pollution associated with them.~

The next industrial revolution will be much cleaner and more knowledge-intensive as manufacturers find new ways of managing resources and making products tailored to their customer’s individual tastes, according to Hoda ElMaraghy.

“Customers are becoming more personally involved and managing their desire for variety is becoming a huge challenge,” said Dr. ElMaraghy, an engineering professor and director of the university's Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Centre.

ElMaraghy, a Canada Research Chair in Manufacturing Systems, was invited to lecture at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on November 25 for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Canada Research Chair program. She will speak on the subject Advanced Manufacturing: What will the next industrial revolution look like?

As consumers demand more customized products in everything from automobiles to electronics, she said, manufacturers will need to become increasingly flexible and be able to quickly reconfigure their systems. Changeable manufacturing systems that can rapidly produce a variety of products in small and medium-sized quantities will become increasingly favoured over factories dedicated to producing single products in large quantities. Desktop scale mini-factories are being developed for micro and nano-production of miniaturized components used in electronics, medical and other applications.

As for employment, the people who have versatile technical skills to design, run and reconfigure these new manufacturing systems will be the most successful, she said.

A decline of available cheap oil will create greater regionalization as manufacturers rethink how they function in a global economy, she added. Rather than chase low labour cost economies for production and then ship finished goods to markets at increasing cost, manufacturers will strive to respond to emerging markets by finding ways to quickly assemble their products there. That trend will result in more collaboration and increased corporate sharing of manufacturing facilities to produce a variety of products.

“This is an innovation that will help high-cost manufacturers in Canada, US and Europe,” she said. “We can’t compete on just wages. Competitive edge will come in how you manage resources and innovate products and manufacturing systems. This is an important part of our research.”

ElMaraghy’s research developed innovative changes used in integrated products and production planning. Her group pioneered methods to prolong the life of manufacturing systems and increase their economic sustainability, and were inspired by the symbiotic co-evolution of species in nature. Her intelligent manufacturing systems laboratory in the new Centre for Engineering Innovation will feature these innovations and demonstrate how they are applied.

The CRC program was established in 2000 and now invests $300 million a year to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds. Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence, improve our depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen Canada's international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers' work.

UWindsor currently has 15 Canada Research Chairholders and many of them will be attending 10th anniversary celebrations in Toronto next week.

— Stephen Fields

Read a Toronto Star article about Dr. ElMaraghy's presentation.

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 Daily News -Public Affairs & Communications - Friday, September 25, 2009
Transferring knowledge, training renaissance engineers focus of $1.4 million research program

Watching students transform into “renaissance engineers” who will be on the leading edge of transferring innovative knowledge into more efficient industrial applications has been the most satisfying part of being a Canada Research Chair for Hoda ElMaraghy.~

“Seeing our student researchers achieve their potential has been tremendously rewarding,” said Dr. ElMaraghy, director of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Centre. “We’re trying to create an environment for them to excel and foster among them this ability to innovate.”

ElMaraghy recently learned her Canada Research Chair in Manufacturing Systems was renewed for another seven years with $1.4 million in federal funding. Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, announced $159.1 million in funding for 181 CRCs at 45 Canadian universities at a press conference at the University of Guelph Wednesday morning.

“Canada’s government is investing in science and technology to strengthen the economy, improve Canadians’ quality of life and create the jobs of tomorrow today,” Goodyear said.

ElMaraghy said Canada is a high-cost manufacturing country and to preserve jobs while efficiently producing a wide variety of consumer goods, it’s crucial for manufacturers to streamline their products and processes and capitalize on commonality. Universities have a crucial role in developing technological solutions and training engineers to become “enablers of change” who can help manufacturers respond efficiently to the rapidly changing demands of consumers.

“What enables a manufacturer to respond efficiently?” she said. “It’s their ability to adapt and change process plans and production schedules and reconfigure the manufacturing system itself. It’s not just management. They need tools and technology.”

Since 2002, ElMaraghy’s team has authored 110 peer-reviewed publications and trained 27 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Fourteen of them have gone on to become professors, while 11 are currently working in industry. Her students have worked closely with several local companies on reconfiguring their process and production planning systems so they can fully utilize their machines, adapt to product variations and deliver on time.

Over the next seven years, ElMaraghy’s team will continue to research and develop even more knowledge to boost productivity and competitiveness that can be transferred to industry and commercialized.

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Monday, July 6, 2009 University of Windsor Daily News

Still a future in manufacturing, says scholarship winner

Master's student Victoria Townsend won a $5,000 scholarship from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation.

The fact that Ontario’s industrial sector is struggling now doesn’t mean there’s no future in manufacturing, according to a recent engineering scholarship winner.~

In fact, there are plenty of opportunities for forward-thinking individuals willing to embrace the idea that the manufacturing industry can quickly adapt to constantly changing consumer demands, says Victoria Townsend.

“I don’t think manufacturing is going to go away,” says the winner of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation E. Wayne Kay graduate scholarship.

“In fact, some of the advanced technologies we’ve been working on could actually help increase a manufacturing company’s competitiveness and improve the economy.”
Townsend, a master’s candidate in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, is examining hybrid methods for rapid prototyping, which could help cut the lead time required to design and make parts so that manufacturers can get their products to market more quickly.

The scholarship, worth about $5,000 US, is awarded annually to four students from across North America. It is named for E. Wayne Kay, who came to Detroit in the early 1940s and created a successful chrome-plating business. He was deeply committed to the society and his widow, Beulah Kay, endowed a scholarship fund in his memory.

Townsend praised her supervisors Jill Urbanic and Waguih ElMaraghy for their support, as well as Jerry Sokolowski and the 2009 casting capstone team for collaborating on her research.
 

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Windsor Star Article - July 14, 2008 (Dave Hall, Windsor Star; Published: July 14, 2008)

SARINA TURNER - Industrial Engineering Student
PROGRAM UNITES STUDENT, DAINTY FOODS

A University of Windsor Graduate student is taking advantage of a new provincially funded internship program designed to move more students from the classroom into workplaces for hands-on training.

complete article:Program Unites Student

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