Cohort 33 during QUEST Camp in August 2019.

Put on your best suit jacket and settle into your seats, because it’s that time of the year again: Cohort 33 is stepping through their routers and into a virtual semester of 490H this spring! Representing the culmination of four semesters of experiential learning under the guidance of the Quality Guild, the students will be applying the design thinking, process improvement, data analysis, and collaboration skills developed throughout the sequence of core QUEST courses. This semester’s clients are representing a particularly diverse range of industries from defense contractors to nonprofits. In just a few short months, students will be presenting their work with one of ten unique corporate partners. 

Continue reading →

Cohort 36 takes their group photo at virtual QUEST Camp.

All QUEST students can remember the mixed emotions of experiencing orientation: the anticipation of meeting your team and the excitement of finally experiencing what the program is like. This semester, although Cohort 36 completed orientation virtually, all of those familiar emotions remained. As a mentor for Cohort 36 myself, I can say that the week was a success on all ends. 

Continue reading →

It is Cohort 32’s time to shine as they take on the QUEST Capstone Professional Practicum (BMGT/ENES 490H) this fall! Cohort 32 will have a chance to demonstrate all the skills they have developed over the last two years in disciplines such as data analysis and design thinking, as well as the virtual teamwork skills they have developed since March.

This semester has a wide variety of clients, from nonprofit organizations to aerospace companies. There are ten projects this semester with nine corporate partners: Casey Cares Foundation, Children’s National Hospital, Leidos, Materne North America – GoGo squeeZ, Northrop Grumman, Oceaneering, Sealed Air, Thales, and Tronox.   

Casey Cares Foundation provides ongoing and uplifting programming to critically ill children and their families in seven states throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Washington DC, and parts of the Midwest. Their project involves recommending how to ramp up Casey Cares’ virtual offerings and make these programs more efficient and cost-effective.

Children’s National Hospital is another nonprofit partnering with QUEST this semester. Their project focuses on reducing patient wait times and increasing the efficiency of processes involved in in-person visits at the primary care centers. Lydia Hu (Cohort 32) said, “We’re excited to get to speak to the different clinicians and operational staff at the primary care centers to hear firsthand about their experiences in patient care delivery. It’s also eye-opening to be working with a healthcare provider right now to see the adjustments they’re making as demand for telehealth increases and vulnerable populations are at even greater risk of poor health outcomes.”

The team working with Tronox plans to identify inefficiencies in the accounts payable process and make recommendations to improve this process. Cam O’Meara (Cohort 32) said, “I’m most excited about the opportunity to use the data analysis skills I have learned in QUEST to discover how Tronox can improve its cash collection cycle. The company hasn’t looked through the data in this way before, so there is great potential to make some cool discoveries that can really benefit the company.”

The project with Sealed Air involves recycling the steam condensate from manufacturing, and they are also working with a QUEST alumnus, Joseph Dadzie (Cohort 23). The team will identify leakage points in Sealed Air’s condensate recycling process and develop a solution that will allow Sealed Air to reach a satisfactory condensate recycling rate. Mutaz Ahmed (Cohort 32) said, “The most exciting part of our project is the opportunity to learn in-depth about the processes taking place in a manufacturing plant and how, through data-driven insights, we can provide our client with important insights on their steam condensate recovery system.” 

The project with GoGo squeeZ focuses on using historical data on price and performance to create carrier profiles and to determine how well that carrier is performing. The team is working with QUEST alumnus Max Cooper (Cohort 19).

The team working with Oceaneering (OTECH) is improving its risk management program by looking at one area where the risk management program worked well and one area where it did not work well. This team is working with QUEST alumnus Jeff Gamerman (Cohort 12).

Northrop Grumman, which has sponsored 21 projects since 2009, is working with two QUEST teams this fall. One of the projects focuses on creating guidelines to be used during various business decision opportunities, and the other focuses on assessing a supply base risk matrix.

The project with Thales Defense & Security, Inc. involves improving its design process and tools by incorporating analysis of defects and process improvements. They will be working with QUEST alumnus Steve Kutchi (Cohort 1).

Finally, the project with Leidos involves an improved process that would allow them to generate rough orders of magnitude easily for quicker turnaround.

Best of luck to Cohort 32 as they continue working on their recommendations! Final presentations at our virtual QUEST Conference will take place on Thursday, December 10th – be on the lookout for more details in the coming weeks!

One of the key pillars of QUEST, the 490H course, looks different this semester in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. In the new reality of remote-learning, and the changing working arrangements within companies, the way that teams and clients interact with each other has drastically changed. However, Cohort 31 is stepping up to the challenge and working hard to continue our efforts of providing insightful recommendations for our clients.

Teams gave their first status update presentations on March 11th, during what would become the final week of in-person classes for the semester. There are eight projects this semester with a variety of corporate partners: DXC, Intralox, Lockheed Martin, Middle River Aerostructure Systems, Northrop Grumman, PAE, and Thos. Somerville.

There are two projects with Middle River Aerostructure Systems (MRAS) this spring. One of the projects focuses on analyzing defective parts at MRAS’ ProWarehouse, and the other project focuses on identifying bottlenecks in the First Article Inspection approval process. Through communicating more frequently and establishing recurring meetings with clients, Kellie Zhang (Q31) is proud of her team’s adaptability. “The FAI process is a big pain for many employees as rarely do things get approved the first time through, so our project could help smooth out the process,” Kellie said. “I think the most exciting thing will be seeing the impact we can have!”

With Northrop Grumman, the team is working on improving information flow between stakeholders. Success for this project requires lots of interviews with stakeholders at their Elkton site, so the team has utilized virtual resources to continue their progress. Anusha Dixit (Q31) describes, “The changes in our schedules have allowed for more time to debrief before and after client calls, and our project champion has been instrumental in setting up interviews with employees. We even had a virtual site visit, interviewing many stakeholders and gaining a lot of valuable insight. Gaining these snapshots into the work that the employees at Northrop Grumman do and seeing how their roles fit together to accomplish a larger collective goal (of making rockets!) was incredibly cool.”

The project with Thos. Somerville involves improving traceability of inventory adjustments. The team hopes to benefit their client by providing reasoning and awareness for over half of their inventory adjustments. Amara Kamal (Q31) hopes this awareness will continue after the project is completed. “We’re providing more transparency in their inventory adjustment process for hopefully years to come.” The team feels confident about working on the project remotely, especially since they had already done their site visits in the first half of the semester. Amara finds one of the most exciting parts of the project to be working with the company’s C-suite. “We get to speak with the people who, at the end of the day, get the final say, and it’s really exciting to hear about their process and reasoning behind creating value-added strategic change to a business with 20 branches and a central distribution center.”

Additionally, there are four more projects working with DXC, Intralox, Lockheed Martin, and PAE. The project with DXC focuses on using design thinking methods to design a system for future military engagements leveraging new technical capabilities such as machine learning, 5G networks, and high performance computing. The team working with Intralox is tasked with analyzing the current state of metadata throughout a product’s life cycle, then suggesting an improved process where Intralox and its systems can better leverage these findings and effectively use and share data across all stages of the product life cycle.

The project with Lockheed Martin focuses on their Moorestown, NJ work center, and the team is working with QUEST alumnus Nick Gregorio (Q19). The team will utilize their skills to optimize the use of the work center’s footprint and provide recommendations for how to continue investment in the work center to support continued future growth. The final project is sponsored by PAE and involves improving the defense and government contractor’s process of international material flow, particularly their delivery of materials to the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

Cohort 31 has made incredible progress so far, in spite of the unprecedented changes this semester. It will be exciting to see how this semester’s projects come together in the final few weeks! Although the QUEST Conference scheduled for May 7th has been canceled, be on the lookout for updates on how Cohort 31 will present their findings virtually.