The title of his winning paper was "An Automation Tool for Long-Range Capacity Planning”. The conference brought together student IISE chapters from the Midwest at Ohio University Feb. 24-25, 2017. The conference theme was on finding “the ‘IE’ in relief” – exploring how industrial engineers contribute to disaster relief efforts. About 300 undergraduates from Purdue, Ohio State, Youngstown State, Michigan, Wayne State, Wright State, Western Michigan, and Ohio University, among others, participated.

Perkins’ paper was inspired by his internship project at Amway last summer. “I reduced the time it took to generate a facility capacity report by a factor of 12 - from 120 minutes to 10 minutes - by using a computer programming language,” explained Perkins. “The paper described how this tool worked, as well as the implications of the tool for the company and the supply chain planning industry.” 

“I focused more on the "big picture" of this project,” he continued. “In many administrative organizations, there is a lot of wasted time and effort going into repetitive, manual tasks. Many of these processes can be automated so that the brightest minds can focus on larger-scale projects.” 

Besides writing the paper, Perkins had to do an oral presentation. “I enjoyed the opportunity to present and listen to other student presenters from different universities,” he said. “The other presentations were very well done, which makes me proud that there are so many bright industrial engineering students across the Midwest.” 

He thanks Amway colleagues for providing him with the resources and knowledge to carry out the project that is the subject of the paper, and is grateful to his Purdue IISE peers for watching and supporting him. 

“It required a lot of work, but I figured that if I can do it, then I should do it,” he reflected. “Looking back, I'm happy that I did.  Now I have the opportunity to present the paper at the national level, and the IISE National Conference in Pittsburgh, PA, on May 20. I am proud to represent Purdue in this context.”

Writer: DeEtte Starr, starrd@purdue.edu