2013

Management Engineering Design SymposiumDepartment of Management Sciences

Friday, March 22, 2013 | 9:30 am - 6 pm

William G. Davis Computer Research Centre (Davis Centre)University of WaterlooWaterloo, Ontario

Management Engineering Design Symposium 2013Held in conjunction with Software Engineering and Nanotechnology Engineering

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BUILDING INDEXCODE BUILDING – LOCATIONAL Arts Lecture Hall – G4B1 biology 1 – G4B2 biology 2 – G4BMH b.c. Matthews Hall – G3BRH brubacher House – F2C2 chemistry 2 – G3, G4CGR conrad Grebel University college – F5CIF columbia Icefield – G2CLN columbia Lake Village North – b2, c1, c2CLV columbia Lake Village – b2, c2, D2COG columbia Greenhouses – D2

COM commissary – H3CPH carl A. Pollock Hall – H4CSB central services building – G3DC William G. Davis computer research centre –

H3, H4DWE Douglas Wright Engineering building – H4E2 Engineering 2 – H4E3 Engineering 3 – H4E5 Engineering 5 – H3, H4E6 Engineering 6 – H4ECH East campus Hall – H3, H4, I3, I4EIT centre for Environmental & Information

technology – G4ERC Energy research centre – G3

EV1 Environment 1 – G5EV2 Environment 2 – G5EV3 Environment 3 – G5ESC Earth sciences & chemistry – G4FED Federation Hall – F3GA 335 Gage street – see back pageGH Graduate House – G4GSC General services complex – G3, H3HH J.G. Hagey Hall of the Humanities – G5 HMN Hildegard Marsden Nursery – G2HS Health services – F4KDC Klemmer Day care – G2LHI Lyle s. Hallman Institute for Health Promotion –G3LIB Dana Porter Library – G4

M3 Mathematics 3 – G3MC Mathematics & computer building– G3MHR Minota Hagey residence – F5, G5MKV William Lyon Mackenzie King Village – E3ML Modern Languages – G4NH Ira G. Needles Hall – G4OPT school of Optometry – G2PAC Physical Activities complex – G3PAS Psychology, Anthropology, sociology – G5PHR school of Pharmacy – see back pagePHY Physics – G4, H4QNC Quantum Nano centre – G4RAC research Advancement centre – F1RA2 research Advancement centre 2 – F1

RCH J.r. coutts Engineering Lecture Hall – H4REN renison University college – F4REV ron Eydt Village – E3SCH south campus Hall – G4, G5, H5SLC student Life centre – G3STJ st. Jerome’s University – F4STP st. Paul’s University college – F4TC William M. tatham centre for co-operative Education & career services – G4, G5TH tutors’ Houses – E3UC University club – F3UWP University of Waterloo Place – I4, I5V1 student Village 1 – E3, F3

PARKING INDEXVISITOR PARKINGAll Day, Every DayC, N, W, X: $5 per day – pay and display Lot X is free on weekendsHV: Weekdays: $2 per hour with $10 deposit on entry. Deposit reduces throughout day. After 3 pm and weekends: $5 coin entryM: $6 pay and displayD: Weekdays: $2 per hour up to daily maximum of $15. After 5 pm and weekends: $5 coin entryP: $4 coin entry for st. Jerome’s University, renison University college and st. Paul’s University college; $1 per hour up to a $4 daily maximum at conrad Grebel University collegeOV: $5 coin exitJ, S, V: $5 pay and display. Pay in lot sCL, UWP: $5 pay and display

AFTER 4 PM AND WEEKENDSA, B, EC, H, R: $5 coin entry

PERMIT PARKING Faculty and Staff: A, B, H, K, L, N, O, R, T, XResident: CL, J, S, V, UWP, TParking in any ungated lot after 4:30 pm with valid Faculty/staff Permit

MOTORCYCLESPurchase a term or day pass from Parking services, in the cOM building for use at motorcycle pads

ACCESSIBLE PARKINGAccessible parking for persons with disabilities is available in most lots. For details visit:parking.uwaterloo.ca

SHORT-TERM PARKINGFifteen minute parking is available on the ring road at Environment 2 and Ira G. Needles Hall. Meter parking is available, visit the Parking website for locations at: parking.uwaterloo.ca

WATCARD PAYMENTAvailable at Lot C, N, W, X, M, UWP

LEGENDPARKING

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DAVIS CENTRE

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DIRECTIONS TO WATERLOO MAIN CAMPUS» from Highway 401 take

Exit 278 (from toronto) or Exit 278b (from London) to Highway 8 West, Kitchener

» exit at Highway 85 to Waterloo» exit at University Avenue West» University of Waterloo is

at University Avenue and seagram Drive

WE THANK OUR SPONSORS FOR THEIR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SYMPOSIUM AWARDS

Symposium sponsors

1Management Engineering Design Symposium 2013

A message from Frank Safayeni, Chair of the Department of Management Sciences

I am delighted to personally invite you to the 2nd annual Management Engineering Design Symposium. Through interactive displays, twelve groups of senior management engineering students will showcase their capstone design projects to the larger university and local community and to our industry partners and sponsors.

This year’s student designs have tackled engineering problems in the health care, manufacturing, energy, retail, construction, broadcasting, finance, and transportation industries. The presented solutions combine different management sciences techniques and know-how, stemming from our department’s specialties in operations research, information systems, and management of technology.

The management engineering program at the University of Waterloo was launched in 2007 and is administered by the Department of Management Sciences. Its curriculum integrates analytical models of management and industrial systems, information technology, and social science. Our students have demonstrated their capacity and creativity through their academic excellence, successful co-op and post-graduate employment, strong extracurricular involvement, and as we hope you’ll witness yourself at the symposium, innovative solutions to pressing industry problems.

In the design project series of courses the students work in groups on an industry sourced design problem over a period of 12 months. They are jointly supervised and guided by the course instructors, Oscar Nespoli and Ada Hurst, and by a faculty member with expertise in the particular design problem. If your organization would like to work with a management engineering student team in the 2013-2014 cohort or beyond, please contact Ada Hurst as detailed in page 8 of this booklet.

Sincerely, Frank

Frank SafayeniProfessor and ChairDepartment of Management Sciences

Participants

“Project Broadcast: A solution for project managers”

AbstrAct – Project broadcast is a mobile application that is designed to be a consolidation of all the essential tools a team and the project manager need to complete multiple projects on time and within budget. supported by Deloitte, Project broadcast is created for project teams who value the importance of communication but are often between many locations on the job site and rarely at their desk. Managers can be effi ciently updated on their team members’ progress by simply launching the application’s home screen and reviewing the most crucial, current updates. this home screen is the key feature that sets this application apart from existing software by presenting all relevant information to the user on one screen while remaining uncluttered, simple and easy to read. the current state of Project broadcast is a high-level prototype on an Android operating system.

“Electricity Cost Reduction with Optimal Hydroelectric Generation”

AbstrAct – Many industrial companies suff er from large utility bills. Our project is a decision support system providing dual functionality to minimize overall electricity costs for a large mining company with hydroelectric generators. through forecasting of Ontario electricity prices and river fl ow volumes and consideration of available water storage, an optimal daily hydroelectric generation schedule is determined. In its second function, the system minimizes the company’s costs based on their contribution to Ontario’s peak demand. the system predicts the events during which Ontario’s demand is extremely high, so that the company can reduce their demand and lower the electricity costs. 

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Prof. Mark Hancock, Scott Easton, Hardeep Chagger, Mark Santos, Megan Maguire

Prof. Lukasz Golab, Prof. Jatin Nathwani, Helen Jiang, Michael Lin, Ryan Levman, Jennifer Yip.

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“Airline Market Entry Decision Making”

AbstrAct – the airline industry is a highly competitive market, thus selecting an attractive market entry is both challenging and critical for airline carriers. the outcome of the project is a decision support system that recommends attractive market entries. Historical information of multiple market entries for different airline carriers are analyzed to identify attributes that led carriers to successful market entries. the proposed decision support system identifies potential successful market entry opportunities for airline carriers to enter based on their predefined constraints and preferred market characteristics.

“Improving Space Allocation Strategic Category Planning”

AbstrAct – sophisticated space planning techniques provide retailers with a competitive advantage to best meet customer needs and generate profit. Walmart canada leverages data to tailor product space allocation to individual stores; however the process is restricted by data limitations and lack of automation. this project presents a system that utilizes statistical analysis, heuristics, and optimization techniques on financial and demographic data to recommend the most profitable department layouts for Walmart stores. Furthermore the tool drastically reduces time spent on space allocation and empowers space planners to make informed decisions.

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Josse Ma, Christine Lee, Prof. Benny Mantin, Johnathan Fisseha, Arun Mistry

Jason Chen, Anil Bajja, Lisa Truchon, Oladayo Olawo, and Prof. Ada Barlatt

“Goals ++”

AbstrAct – Goal setting can be an effective approach for individuals to create change and achieve desired outcomes in their lives. It is common for individuals to set goals for themselves in various life areas, generally beginning with a bright outlook and motivation. Unfortunately, a lack of detailed implementation strategies, unexpected setbacks, and a decline in motivation can impede progress and often lead to failure. Goals++ is an interactive tool which offers personalized coaching to help motivate individuals with encouragement that is reflective of their unique personality. by establishing a plan, anticipating risks, tracking progress, and receiving personalized feedback, individuals can work towards getting what they want out of life.

“Surgical Bed Resource Analysis”

AbstrAct – As demand for health care services increases across canada, it becomes essential for hospitals to fully utilize their resources to more effectively serve patients. surgical departments often dictate the workload across other departments and many hospitals find it challenging to efficiently plan their surgical procedures to maximize the use of their resources. this project focuses on creating a decision support tool for Grand river Hospital to help them make better decisions when compiling their surgical block schedule. the application designed uses historical data and allows the hospital to input a block schedule and investigate the effects it has on the usage levels of the hospital recovery beds.

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M 5

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Trevor Jenkins, Cecilia Hou, Prof. Vanessa Bohns, Florence Acevedo

Prof. Ada Barlatt, Sarah Sleiman, Alexandra Collins, Prof. Beth Jewkes, Shivali Sharma

Management Engineering Design Symposium 2013 5

“Staff Assignment in Emergency Department”

AbstrAct – Assigning resources to tasks is a routine job required in several industries and proves to be a time-consuming and demanding process given the need of considering multiple criteria in order to yield an effective assignment. this project aims to offer a solution to this problem by creating a decision support tool that improves the assignment process. the tool was primarily developed for staff assignment in Emergency Department (ED) to assist in distribution of nurses, attendants and clerks across all sub-departments in ED. the tool provides operational assignment of staff given the specific requirements of each department within ED along with tactical assignment to assess the long term performance of the staff schedule using simulation and heuristics.

“Financial Trading Strategies”

AbstrAct – this project explores the creation of financial trading strategies, most of which are not readily available to retail investors with limited resources such as time, money, and tools. trading strategies were developed that were verifiable, consistent, and objective, all of which lead to the goal of maximizing consistent return while minimizing risk. strategies were developed based on research, intuition, personal observations, and work experience. to validate and ensure consistency, all strategies were rigorously back tested on historical data for their feasibility and implemented in a live setting using an internally developed automatic trader.

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Van Nguyen, Yumna Alam, Prof. Kenneth McKay, Mustafa El Shatshat, Iqra Haseeb

Prof. Stan Dimitrov, Sally Lee, Radwan Allahoum, Hitheam Mohamed, Hobyung Lee, William Truong

“Resource Management System Design”

AbstrAct – “this project applies management engineering principles to the development of an enterprise resource management system tailored to a construction company specializing in shoring operations. Upon analyzing the current system and its related processes, improvement opportunities were identified in the database design and user interface. the proposed design improves the database architecture, utilizes Human – computer Interaction (HcI) methodologies to improve the interfaces, and offers a complete process review of the client company’s processes in order to modify the software to best cater to their needs.”

“Designing a Production Process to Meet Growing Demand”

AbstrAct – A soil manufacturing process was designed for Gro-bark, Ontario’s largest producer of commercial soil products. Utilizing facility planning, optimization techniques and material movement modelling, new manufacturing process designs were evaluated and selected based on cost effectiveness, ability to produce an order within a day and potential for future growth. three components of the soil manufacturing process were considered: the ingredient locations on-site, retrieving ingredients and the mix line. the final design shows how a new, integrated site would be laid out and how it would operate.

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M 9

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Joshua Fiscalini, Salosan Soundhararajah, Minh Le, Kajan Karunakaran, Prof. Stan Dimitrov

Molly Beckel, Ignacio Cardona, Tim McKague, Victoria Osler, Prof. Jim Bookbinder

Management Engineering Design Symposium 2013 7

“boom”: Data Collection System for TV Viewership

AbstrAct – broad use of the internet marked the consumer shift from traditional sources to computer and mobile devices for viewing television programming. Viewership data collection methods used by networks suffer from a fundamental inability to collect information at the individual level. this results in networks making production decisions based on incomplete data, impacting both their bottom line as well as viewer satisfaction. “boom” is an interactive mobile application designed with gamification principles to collect more granular viewership data from the increasing smartphone and computer-based watchers. the viewership and user data is aggregated and presented in an easy-to-read dashboard that can be modified to specific television network key performance metrics.

“Hematite Manufacturing Labour Scheduling System”

AbstrAct – “Labour scheduling is an essential component of the manufacturing process. Yet, creating labour schedules effectively remains a challenge for many organizations. Our client, Hematite Manufacturing, produces parts for the automotive industry using much of the waste destined for landfill sites. Within their production process, scheduling with appropriate worker allocation is a lengthy job due to its iterative nature. A software system is designed to solve and automate the labour scheduling process at Hematite. the system takes into consideration product demand, processing constraints, and machine and worker availability to generate an optimized weekly labour schedule. In addition, the design provides an easy-to-use interface to minimize the time it takes to create the schedule.”

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Prof. Mark Hancock, Melissa Deziel, Sean Dy, Steven Hollaar

Prof. Amer Obeidi, Rubiya Zinnet, Edima Udo

Current and past industry sponsors of design projectsACMS Export Inc.Bespoke Inventory SolutionsDeloitte Inc. Grand River HospitalGro-BarkHematite ManufacturingNestle CanadaSteriPro CanadaUnique OpticalWalmart CanadaWintek Engineering

Current and past faculty advisorsAda BarlattVanessa BohnsJim BookbinderPeter CarrStan DimitrovLukasz GolabFatma GzaraMark HancockQi-Ming HeBeth JewkesBenny MantinKen McKayJatin NathwaniAmer ObeidiMark SmuckerOlga Vechtomova

Future projectsFor additional information on the Management Engineering design projects or to inquire about participation in future cohorts, please contact:

Ada HurstLecturer & Industry LiaisonDepartment of Management SciencesFaculty of EngineeringUniversity of Waterloo200 University Ave. W.Waterloo ON N2L 3G1Tel: 519-888-4567, ext. 35172Email: adahurst@uwaterloo.ca

Sponsors and supporters

Course instructorsOscar NespoliAda Hurst

Support staffDayna Chan, laboratory technicianVu Huynh, computer technicianShelley Vossen, undergraduate coordinator

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Symposium Winners 2012

SteriPro Operations AnalysisTeam members: Michael Quinlan, christopher smellie, Alex Dueck

Faculty advisor: Prof. Fatma Gzara

“I write to express steriPro canada’s pleasure to be working with your engineering students, christopher smellie, Alex Dueck, and Mike Quinlan…Without doubt their work…will allow steriPro to improve its current operations and will more importantly benefit our plans for future facility developments. …these gentlemen are outstanding representatives of your [department]”Lynne trott, General ManagersteriPro canada

An Interactive Solution to eBooks

Team members: Ahmer rafiq, Kynan Gallagher, rashid El-Ladki

Faculty advisor: Prof. Mark Hancock

this student project placed third in the Desire2Learn Edge challenge 2012 competition, in the blackberry sDK category ($4500 prize)

Implementing Off-Peak Deliveries in the GTA: Costs, Benefits and Challenges

Team members: Ari Paunonen, Jessica McPhee, taufiq ramji

Faculty advisor: Prof. Jim bookbinder

With a paper based on this design project, the team became National Winners of the 2012 National student Paper Award of supply chain and Logistics canada ($3000 prize)

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1ST PRIZE

3RD PRIZE

2ND PRIZE

University of Waterloo200 University Ave. W.Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1

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