SPRING 2004

EPICS

Engineering Projects in Community Service

By Dr. Faiz Al-Khayyal, Associate Professor and EPICS Program Director

A team of senior design students is spending the academic year working closely with Hands On Atlanta (HOA), a volunteer-recruitment agency that assists nonprofit groups throughout Metro Atlanta. Team members Jessica Holmes, Carla Bryce, Faith Hyman, Dayton Shuman, Mark Rogers, and Tim Sweeney, under the supervision of Professor Augustine Esogbue, are helping the agency make better use of its partner, the Atlanta Community ToolBank.

HOA, an EPICS partner, is traditionally a good source for senior design projects. The nation's largest single-day volunteer event is Hands On Atlanta Day, held every October. This day is the largest and most demanding event for both HOA and the ToolBank. In 2003, approximately 16,000 volunteers were assigned to more than 200 projects. These typically involve the clean up of buildings and grounds, including repair and painting.

Up to this point, HOA has been using a non-automated paper system to request materials from the ToolBank, an organization that stores tools for community efforts. This manual process is prone to error. The senior design team's EPICS program is creating a robust automated system for HOA and the ToolBank.

HOA has grown so rapidly that the ToolBank's current warehouse facility can no longer handle the traffic. Volunteers are often confused while hunting for tools. The ToolBank is now undergoing a $350,000 remodeling. With the students' assistance in automating ToolBank functions, the new ToolBank will soon be efficiently managed.

The goal of this EPICS project is to develop a system that improves the operation of HOA's tool allocation process. This will be accomplished by addressing three opportunities for improvement:

  1. reduce the number of HOA staff hours needed to complete the tool allocation process, which takes staff away from their normal daily duties;
  2. reduce the number of errors made during the tool allocation process, which are largely due to the manual nature of the task; and
  3. redesign the layout of tools in the warehouse to provide for more efficient storage, more timely retrieval, and more accurate replacement of tools.
The design team is accomplishing their goal using the follow methods:
  1. modeling in AutoCAD the current ToolBank layout, including the space requirements and placement of each tool;
  2. determining the quantity of each tool needed for Hands On Atlanta Day;
  3. ranking the tools by usage over the last two years in descending order. A recommendation was made to locate the tools used most frequently in the most accessible area in the warehouse, close to the loading/unloading bays.

The results of the data collection and analysis phase of this project, completed Fall Semester, are listed below. Further analysis is being performed during the Spring Semester.

  1. Current ToolBank Layout
    1. Aisles are not properly labeled.
    2. Some of the bigger and heavier items are stored on the higher shelves or in the back of a shelf with no forklift available for retrieval. This causes hazardous conditions for volunteers. Larger items, including ladders and wheelbarrows, are stored in another warehouse, which adds to the inefficiency of the picking process.
    3. The paper sheet used by volunteers to pick tools does not facilitate locating items in the warehouse.
    4. Items are not stored in the ToolBank according to picking frequency, which causes congestion in the areas of high use items.
    5. Insufficient space allocation for plentiful tools results in like tools being placed in different locations throughout the warehouse. Logistically, the placement results in confusion for volunteers and a loss of inventory control.
  2. Process Documentation issues include inconsistent writing format, lack of documentation for some key processes, and the need for more technical and professional language in documentation.
  3. The Automation process lacks functionality for projects to be requested or researched online. When HOA decides on the nature and scope of the desired functionality it to enhance its website, the EPICS team will provide detailed specifications for necessary webpages and links to implement the vision.

Tony Chan, an ISyE graduate and the Hands On Atlanta client representative, says that "Hands on Atlanta wants to grow more aggressively," and the completion of this EPICS project will "significantly impact its progress by providing a sustainable infrastructure for the future." Chan adds that implementation of the project will improve the efficiency of Hands On Atlanta Day by 15-20 percent.

If you are interested in working with EPICS, you are invited to visit our website at www.isye.gatech.edu/epics/.



• Spring 2004 Engineering Enterprise Table of Contents
• Engineering Enterprise Home Page



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