2002-2003 Design Competition Summary
Sonic Speakers is a manufacturer and distributor of audio
speaker systems. Their entire product line includes electronic
sound systems, speaker systems, equipment cases and lighting
equipment for professional use. They ship to both large and
small retailers by way of a third party trucking company. Sonic
outgrew its existing warehouse/ manufacturing facility and has
acquired a new building. This new building will house offices,
manufacturing, distribution and warehousing of finished goods,
raw materials and packaging supplies. Sonic
Speakers currently operates its manufacturing and shipping
staff on a 10 hour schedule. They wish to remain
on this schedule.
Sonics new building is 120,000 sq. ft. facility with a clear
stacking height of 20 feet. Included in the building is 15,000
sq. ft. of offices, 2900 sq. ft. for wood and carpet
manufacture. The remaining 102,100 sq. ft will be
used for warehouse space and the assembly system to be
designed. There are 16 dock doors located on the south side of
the building.
The company anticipates steady volume growth of about 7% per
year and an annual SKU growth of about 3%. It is
assumed that order characteristics (lines/order, units/line,
cartons/order) will remain the same.
Sonic asked the teams to help them develop the best material
handling, storage and product flow for this facility including
the assembly area. They internally designed the carpet &
wood processing departments and wished no re-engineering of
these areas. They felt that those areas could sufficiently
handle the required volume for the next 10 years.
The Results
CICMHE and Modern Materials Handling are pleased to announce
the winners of this year's competition which resulted in the
tightest scoring in the history of the contest. As
a result, there was no clear winner among the top four
submissions. Therefore, the top four student teams
will share first place and split the pool of
prizes. The two honorable mentions were also very
close in scoring to each other.
Five independent judges evaluated the
submissions. Three of the judges are academic
members of CICMHE who did not have teams participating in this
year's competition. The fourth and fifth judges were industrial
members of MHIA with experience in integrated system
design.
I am pleased to announce the following results:
Four Team First Place Tie
($750 per team plus $375 to each
department):
Simon Poole, Jeremiah Dirnberger, Josh Engle, Sam
Wilkening
Montana State University
Dr. Michael H. Cole, Advisor
Sampatraj Mandroli, Feng Sun
Texas A&M University
Dr. Brett A. Peters, Advisor
Cindy Edlin, Brandi Hill, Nikki Lenihan, Tim
Whitfill
University of Louisville
Dr. John S. Usher, Advisor
Kristopher Garcia, Jonathan Gentry, Brian Piantadosi,
Tom Smith
Virginia Tech
Russell D. Meller, Advisor
Honorable Mentions:
Fazleena Badurdeen, Jacolyn Bailey, Tyson Shirk, Chandu
Tennety
Ohio University
Dr. Dale Masel, Advisor
Jordan Glastein, Lisa Kaytor, Jennifer Jolley, Justin
Sabo
Penn State University
Dr. D.J. Medeiros, Advisor