Zeiser Recognized as Outstanding IE 431 Capstone Partner

Mary Jo Zeiser, student success manager for Purdue Dining & Culinary, was recognized as the Senior Design Partner of the Year by the School of Industrial Engineering for her work with the IE 431 senior design class.

Dining & Culinary annually collaborates with IE 431 on several capstone projects as part of its commitment to cocurricular education. The course is a capstone course for seniors in the School of Industrial Engineering. IE 431 partners with organizations ranging from non-profits to governmental agencies and multinational corporations, including organizations such as Food Finders Food Bank, the Indiana State Police and Amazon. Students in the class rank their project preferences and are assigned to projects in teams of five.

Dining & Culinary received recognition for their consistent efforts to provide IE 431 students with hands-on experience in identifying, analyzing and defining issues, then formulating and proposing solutions.

“These partnerships help students graduate with hands-on experience,” says Aaron Ramsey, director of industrial relations. “We work with our partners to identify projects that are challenging enough for a team of five students and can be completed in a semester. We’re thankful to Mary Jo Zeiser and the entire Dining & Culinary team for their continued engagement with our students.”

“Throughout the years, we have enjoyed engaging these students to provide solutions to challenges we face,” Zeiser says.

“IE 431 students continually help us improve our operations while they hone their skills in a way that has real impact.” 

This year, Dining & Culinary worked with two IE 431 teams to improve efficiency in Pete’s Za, a grab-and-go location serving pizzas, and Wiley Dining Court. The Pete’s Za project focused on ways to effectively manage the large influx of orders on Sundays, while the team working with Wiley focused on improving the efficiency of the dining court’s dish room.

The Pete’s Za project included shift observations for employee and customer flow, studies of pizza production processes, an analysis of order history and an investigation of mobile ordering. The team’s work resulted in a new physical layout that fully eliminated customer queues, improved pizza preparation times and improved the accuracy of order estimate times. The project team consisted of Mohamad Ardahji, Conor Cronan, Sneha Lal, Rohit Mukherjee and Haley Pollock.

The goal of the Wiley Dining Court project was to reduce dining wait times for students by optimizing dish room procedures. The project team performed tie and motion studies, utilized videos to discern best practices and analyzed factors that contributed to excess motion. The team produced an onboarding video and document to standardize and streamline processes. Students involved in the Wiley project consisted of Alec Francois, Isabel Hardy, Sam Heathcote, Stephen Hohnholt and Jake Kim. 

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