Senior design project gives engineering students real-world training

Every year we have 40 to 60 teams that are working directly with either industry or community partners on a two-semester project. The structure is that a piece of machinery will fail in the field, Carter will rebuild for the customers, but there is a question mark of when am I going to get that engine back? So the team is looking at a solution that is both going to help Carter technicians and supervisors and management to know where jobs are on the floor, as well as as a customer to say, hey, I've got eight engines in repair. Where is each one in the process? Our solution will make it just a couple of clicks away for the supervisor to see where the work order is and the different operations and their statuses. We intentionally had them build it to be standalone, independent of any other of our systems, because we're in the process of upgrading our ERP system and going to a completely different product. So because of that, and it being a standalone product, it's something that we will just be able to integrate and plug and play into our new system. We actually created something that we will see being used by a company. And not all senior design projects get that luxury of seeing it implemented. We've worked with some teams with Virginia Tech VAR for several years. This year, you know, the team has done really well. They came in initially, set up their expectations and plans and coordinated what was important to us, what time they had to sit down and interact and really understand kind of how we can help each other through this whole process.