Kennesaw State University - Maintenance Optimization and Cost Analysis

Author

Mary E. Ogidigben, Kennesaw State UniversityFollow
David T. Murphy, Kennesaw State UniversityFollow
William L. Fowler, Kennesaw State UniversityFollow

Date of Submission

Spring 4-21-2020

Project Type

Senior Design

Major

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Department

Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering

Committee Chair/First Advisor

Dr. Adeel Khalid

Secondary Advisor

Dr. Lois Jordan

Abstract

The Department of Housing and Residence Life was looking for ways to improve the quality of their work while saving costs at the same time. The department allowed the team to look over their work orders where the team noticed over 50% of the work orders were related to room turnover. After this discovery, the team focused all efforts on room turnover and went over the process in detail with management. The team asked to see the standard operating procedure for room turnover and learned that most of the staff did not know they had one.

The team wanted to investigate why the staff was not aware of the SOP, so the team met with the assistant director of housing facilities to discuss why the SOP was not in use. He expressed that the SOP was not specific enough to direct the technicians in what the department was looking for. This led the team to begin thinking about creating a new SOP.

After some research, the team learned that reducing variability was a good way of saving costs and that standard operating procedures were a reliable way of reducing variability. The team spoke with the department and reached the decision that a new SOP was the right decision for the department.

The team began by shadowing the technicians to learn how the procedure should be done and where improvements could be made. As the team shadowed, they learned that resident assistants were supposed to be performing the inspections. This inspired the team to continue with creating the SOP but to also fully shift inspection duties to the resident assistants. After discussions with the housing department management, the new SOP created by the team was accepted and the trial runs with resident directors performing the inspections began. The team recommended that the department make the new SOP available to all resident and student assistants to ensure that each inspection was done in the same manner to reduce variability and rework.

Comments

View Project Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG8ja7dXHng&feature=youtu.be