Sample past projects

Here are some brief descriptions of projects from past students. (I have edited some of these for clarity, and in come cases details have been removed for the sake of confidentiality.)

• My individual project will be to establish a business model for our safety department. The data gathered will be from safety observations made throughout 2008. Metrics will be established to classify the data into such as safe inspections, unsafe inspections, and severity to name a few. These metrics will hopefully determine leading indicators the will help assist the safety department on focusing on problem areas and formulating educated processes that can be used for training.
• The project I am considering is whether to change from the type of hydraulic fluid we are using in one of our critical systems in the mill. The challenge will be to determine which of several types of hydraulic fluid will be the best and most cost effective alternative.
• My organization is trying to decide whether to move from basically independent computer networks in each of our four offices to a server farm with all of our servers and software in one location. This involves up front and annual cost analysis as well as time savings and perhaps some softer issues as well.
• Family and Youth Services currently uses 2 out of 3 buildings to house youth.  In one building we have 20 residents with 11 staff. In another building we have 6 residents with 1 staff. All of the building are on the same property. The decision is whether money should be used to re-model the 3rd building that could be used to house 20 more kids and 11 more staff. I would like to find out if this expansion would be beneficial to the agency.
• For my project, I will explore energy-efficient lighting options for the production area at my organization. I will prepare a business model comparing the existing fixtures and new energy efficient ones.
• The business decision facing our office involves the cost of color printing. Although all of our major publications and posters are printed through external printing companies, there are many that are printed internally on a color printer in our office. The question that is now facing the decision makers in the office is whether it is more cost-effective to continue printing on a color printer or if it would be smarter to rent a color copier with printing capabilities.
• Our company has several onsite warehouses for our product, and leases additional (offsite) warehouse space at a cost of around $600,000 per year; we anticipate that cost may increase in coming years. Should we expand our onsite warehouse capacity?
• Pain Management is a new discipline to our clinic. There are very few physicians in this specialty within a 60 mile radius. Can we justify the addition of a physician's assistant to this department?
• My goal is to seek the benefits of having agency vehicles versus having employees drive their own vehicles. I will look into the sensitivity of different variables that include miles driven, fuel costs, reimbursement rates, and maintenance. I also intend to find the goal seek values to see what point certain variables will need to reach in order for the two options to be equal.
• Would it be cost effective to install solar panels on my home? I would investigate the initial costs of varying sizes and their corresponding outputs as well as factoring maintenance costs and useful life of the system to determine if it is monetarily worthwhile to install.
• My company is evaluating the building of additional offices to house our growing staff. The options being considered are a two-story block building, a double-wide trailer, or no improvements. My goal is to evaluate the costs and benefits associated with each option and present my findings to senior management.
• My boss has asked me to build a model that would help us determine which electric motors should be purchased as spares for our new production line. There are over 500 motors used to operate this line and we need to choose which ones must be stored on the shelf in order to prevent unscheduled down time. Using a model should help us make a good decision based on inputs such as necessity of the motor, motor cost, order lead-time, and cost of lost production.
• I will explore the feasibility of starting a pharmacist-run outpatient warfarin management clinic. The business model will show whether adding this line of service would be beneficial to the hospital.
• We have been asked by an outside organization to service their maintenance needs. I will develop a business model that will help determine if a flat monthly fee or fee by specific service would be a better option. This model will need to account for predicted maintenance and service tasks over the next year.