Current Issue
(Fall 2005)
IE's Maria Chiodi Geared For Success
Industrial engineering student Maria Chiodi says she's never been a gearhead, but her classmates Eric Jones and Brent Hurst are.
As it happened, the three made a perfect team to complete their senior capstone design project at the Ford Truck Plant in Louisville. Speed undergraduates must complete a capstone design project to graduate.
Combining Chiodi's leadership skills with the trio's overall knowledge in industrial engineering, the students recently spent a semester helping the automaker find ways to reduce waste and increase production-line efficiency.
Fred J. Thome, Quality Manager for Ford Kentucky Truck Plant, congratulates Maria and her teammates Eric Jones and Brent Hurst.
"The goal in a capstone project is to take a project from start to finish, working with teams and individual people onsite," Chiodi says.
The group's specific objective was to reduce the cost of scrap in repair areas. "When a truck has to come off the line for repairs, that's a big cost contributor," she says. "We often found that if a big part needed repair they would be replaced with whole, costly components instead of just fixing the smaller part of the component."
The students identified inefficiencies in how repairs were logged as well as in the way parts were stored and tracked. They suggested an improved inventory system for replacement parts that relied more on computers and less on paperwork. For instance, they advised that scrap and repair data be entered directly into a computer system at every repair station.
The team's suggestions if implemented could save Ford big money--nearly $700,000 in two years.
Chiodi's faculty mentor, industrial engineering professor Gail DePuy, was impressed enough with her student's hard work to nominate her for a national scholarship. After writing an essay and fulfilling other academic requirement, Chiodi was one of only two students in North America to win the Dwight D. Gardner Scholarship, awarded annually by the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). The $1,000 scholarship will help Chiodi cover some costs for the 2005-2006 academic year.
"I nominated Maria for the scholarship because not only is she academically gifted, but she possesses many of the skills and traits needed in the engineering profession," DePuy says. "She is a good communicator and a good team player."
At press time Chiodi planned to enroll in graduate school at U of L this fall. She says she was geared toward engineering from a early age. "I always have leaned toward math and science, through grade school and high school," she says.
"People would tell me that engineering is a good area for women to get into. I like the IE field especially because there's a lot of interaction, a chance to deal with a lot of people and to go out to warehouses and factories and solve real problems. You're not always stuck in front of a computer. The capstone project showed me that."
