When Peter Evans, fourth generation owner of Evans Finding Inc., looked around the plant floor of East Providence facility, he would see the same thing every day.
Bulky machinery used to produce metal stamping components filled the 27,000 square feet of space with little room to spare.
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”We moved to this location in 1985,” he said. “We added on in 1998, and my goal was to get three years out of the space. I knew it was going to be difficult.”
To find a better way to manage his day-to-day business Evans looked to a group of consultants.
Not the ordinary group of consultants one might expect, this team was made up of University of Rhode Island engineering students. Evan’s request for ideas for the physical layout of his plant, and suggestions for redesigning certain areas to resolve “periodic production bottlenecks,” became the focus of a semester-long project for seven students.
“Manufacturers are laboratories for us in a sense that they are what we teach,” said Manbir Sodhi, an associate professor of engineering at URI, who teaches students the “Design and Analysis of Manufacturing Systems” course. “It seemed natural that we try and give our students some exposure in this way.”
At least once a week during the spring semester Sodhi’s students visited Evans to collect data or measure parts of the facility.
”This was a great opportunity for us,” Evans said. “It enabled fresh eyes to look at the business. These were very fresh eyes because they really had no other experience with something like this. They had very few preconceived notions.”
The students built a computer model of the facility to analyze Evan’s production process.
”Here at URI we have a variety of computer modeling applications that most companies don’t have access to,” Sodhi said. “One benefit of the partnership we develop is to expose local companies to some of the technology that’s available. It also helps companies to see what someone from the outside the business has to say about their operations.”
The final product of the student project was a detailed facility analysis and layout recommendation for the plant.
”They gave us an analytical model of the work flow through out facility, which looked for bottlenecks,” Evans said. “It’s a model that we can use to predict where bottlenecks might occur if we change the layout of our facility, and how to alleviate them. The students ended up making a recommendation for our plant layout that’s more efficient for work and traffic flow.”
Evans said that though he is still analyzing the final report presented to him by the students he does plan to implement many of the suggested changes. He is expecting to pay between $50,000 and $100,000 to rearrange and upgrade parts of his facility.
”In this business you have to be constantly adjusting what you do and how you do it,” he said. “We compete in an old, mature market where everyone is looking for their own niche. It’s nice to have help like this.”
In addition Evans said he is especially pleased that he can refer to the students’ computer model at any time through the university.
”The goal was to get recommendations about the physical plant, and this project encompassed far more than that,” he said. “We will be able to go back to their project in the years to come as more questions come up.”
Evans Findings is the most recent company studied by Sodhi’s students, but others including Elizabeth Webbing Mills in Central Falls, and Stanley-Bostich Inc. in East Greenwich have also been a part of the class project. The project assigns between six and seven students to each company.
”It’s been such a blast,” Sodhi said. “We have been doing it for years. Normally we don’t have the same problems with each company, so students can get a broad range of situations to handle. We are doing it to learn about company operations.”
Some companies approach Sodhi with specific problems, while others are looking for help finding a more production model.
”When they agree to work with us, companies don’t know what they are getting involved with,” Sodhi said. “It’s a bit of a risk for them, but they gain a lot of experience.”
Sodhi said the program is also helping to attract students to a profession that has seen a decline in the last few years.
”Generally there has been a flight of manufacturing students from New England while bachelor level programs are becoming popular elsewhere,” he said. “The trend in New England is definitely different.”
Still the university continues to attract students, Sodhi said, because it’s the only school in New England accredited in both industrial and manufacturing engineering, and one of the few in the nation to offer a master’s program.
