Capstone Project: Overview
Capstone projects are sponsored by local industries and provide UTD students an opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge gained to solve real world challenging problems in the area of supply chain management. Interaction, feedback and guidance from an industry mentor are a key to this course. All general supply chain courses should be completed before taking this course.
Capstone Course
2004 Capstone Sponsors
• ESI
"The students quickly understood our overall process, the problem Dell was working to solve and how their project fit into the big picture. The team was instrumental in developing new ways to analyze the data available, as well as, present it in a new format making it easier for Dell to make business decisions."
- Stephen Cook
Director, Demand/Supply Planning
"Working with the UTD students on the Capstone project in the fall of 2003 was stimulating and refreshing and taught us as much as them and forced us to structure and understand the problem and solutions in a much clearer fashion."
- Tom HolmenVice President, Operational Development, Ericsson Inc.
Key Benefits / Objectives
Benefits to Students:- An Opportunity to apply skills/knowledge gained to real world problems
- An Opportunity to interact with industry leaders/ leading academics and learn from them
- Gain some industry specific knowledge
- Learn to self learn and from group discussions - key to future learning
- Get in-house consultants to solve the problems
- Industry leaders also get multiple views and perspectives on their current problems
- Keeps the industry leaders current with the latest and enables them to plan internal education efforts
- An opportunity to evaluate and appreciate the relevance of theory to practice
- An Opportunity to evaluate and hire the best candidates
- Low cost and risk, high ROI
Approach
- Identify Target Companies and the Industry Mentor to participate in the course
- Define Project with Industry Mentor
- Identify Interdisciplinary teams or based on the skills required for the project
- The Industry Mentor will present the project to the team
- Each team is responsible for completing the Statement of Work and get approval from instructor
- Each team will work on the specific project and apply the concepts learnt with guidance from the instructor
- Some specific topics will be presented by instructor during the course
- The team will present a report on the progress to the industry leader and instructor based on an agreed upon schedule for feedback
- A final report and a team presentation will be delivered to the sponsoring industry at the end of the course
- The final grade will be awarded by the instructor in consultation with the industry mentor
- The sponsoring company will host a dinner party for the team
Fees and Requirements
- Companies will donate $2500 (startups) or $5000 (established) for each sponsored project to the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks
- Industry Mentor will work with the instructor in defining the project, provide time to the project team as required and help manage scope for timely completion
