The winning team of Akshay Seth and Janice (Yin Yin) Lau
The Spotlight! event is an annual competitive presentation of operations solutions developed by University of Michigan’s Tauber Institute business + engineering student teams during their 14-week team projects at top global companies. The 2021 Tauber team projects reportedly returned a record-setting savings of over $989 million, an average of $43 million in savings per project over three years, in addition to valuable workflow and sustainability improvements. The 2021 project sponsors were AIP, Amazon, Beyond Meat, Boeing, Brunswick, Curation Foods, Estee Lauder, Ford, General Motors, Herman Miller, Howmet, Mayo Clinic, Mott Hospital, NCMS, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Stanley Black & Decker, Stoneridge, Target and Whirlpool.
A panel of distinguished judges from diverse industries selected first place, second place, and two teams that tied for third place. Tauber Institute benefactor Joel Tauber announced the winners at the Spotlight! 2021 Awards Ceremony on November 12. Students on winning teams each receive $5000 scholarships for first place, $4000 for second and $3000 for third.
At the awards ceremony, the Tauber Institute presented the Tauber Trailblazer faculty award to Michigan Ross Lecturer of Technology & Operations Eric Svaan, who has served as business faculty advisor for 45 team projects. The institute also recognized The Boeing Company, Pfizer and American Industrial Partners with Longevity Awards for reaching milestone years of team project partnership. The Tauber Alumni Board presented three Tauber Alumni Scholarships to students selected for their outstanding contributions to the Tauber community over the past year.
First place went to Team Stanley Black & Decker for "Industry 4.0: IIOT Machine Condition Monitoring and Analytics." The Tauber team was tasked with assessing the current state of machine health monitoring, building business use cases to generate a minimum of $150,000 value for three sites with the opportunity to scale globally, developing a data analytics model and creating a roadmap for future deployments to other sites of Stanley Black & Decker divisions. The student team included Janice (Yin Yin) Lau, Master of Science in Industrial & Operations Engineering; and Akshay Seth – Master of Science in Industrial & Operations Engineering.
For information on all the winners, visit: www.tauber.umich.edu
