Tuba Pinar Yildirim

Distribution Network Redesign for Marketing Competitiveness

This article reports on a marketing initiative at a pharmaceutical company to redesign its distribution network. Distribution affects a firms cost and customer satisfaction and drives profitability. Using a nonlinear mixed-integer programming model, the authors develop a distribution network with a dual emphasis on minimizing the total distribution costs and improving the customer service levels. Specifically, they address the following issues: They (1) determine the optimal number of regional distribution centers the firm should operate with, (2) identify where in the United States the firm should locate these distribution centers, (3) allocate each retailer/customer distribution center to an appropriate regional distribution center, and (4) determine the total transportation costs and service level for each case. Finally, they conduct a sensitivity analysis to determine the impact of changes in problem parameters on the optimality of the proposed model. This marketing initiative at the studied firm reduced the total distribution costs by

The Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) Construct: Moving Engineering Education Research Into the Classroom

1.99 million (6%) per year, while increasing the customer on-time delivery from 61.41% to 86.2%, an improvement of 40.4%.

Work in progress - ethical model eliciting activities (E-MEA) - extending the construct

A growing set of “professional skills” including problem solving, teamwork, and communications are becoming increasingly important in differentiating U.S. engineering graduates from their international counterparts. A consensus of engineering educators and professionals now believes that mastery of these professional skills is needed for our graduates to excel in a highly competitive global environment. A decade ago ABET realized this and included these skills among the eleven outcomes needed to best prepare professionals for the 21st century engineering world. This has left engineering educators with a challenge: how can students learn to master these skills? We address this challenge by focusing on models and modeling as an integrating approach for learning particular professional skills, including problem solving, within the undergraduate curriculum. To do this, we are extending a proven methodology — model-eliciting activities (MEAs) — creating in essence model integrating activities (MIAs). MEAs originated in the mathematics education community as a research tool. In an MEA teams of students address an open-ended, real-world problem. A typical MEA elicits a mathematical or conceptual system as part of its procedural requirements. To resolve an MEA, students may need to make new connections, combinations, manipulations or predictions. We are extending this construct to a format in which the student team must also integrate prior knowledge and concepts in order to solve the problem at hand. In doing this, we are also forcing students to confront and repair certain misconceptions acquired at earlier stages of their education. A distinctive MEA feature is an emphasis on testing, revising, refining and formally documenting solutions, all skills that future practitioners should master. Student performance on MEAs is typically assessed using a rubric to measure the quality of solution. In addition, a reflection tool completed by students following an MEA exercise assists them in better assessing and critiquing their progress as modelers and problem solvers. As part of the first phase a large, MEA research study funded by the National Science Foundation and involving six institutions, we are investigating the strategies students use to solve unstructured problems by better understanding the extent that our MEA/MIA construct can be used as a learning intervention. To do this, we are developing learning material suitable for upper-level engineering students, requiring them to integrate concepts they’ve learned in foundation courses while teasing out misconceptions. We provide an overview of the project and our results to date.© 2008 ASME

Work in progress - assessment of MEA problem solving processes used by engineering students

Mastery of the professional skills is needed if our graduates will continue to excel in the increasingly global engineering environment. To date, much of the research associated with studying ethical decision making in organizations has focused on business and individual decisions with little empirical research focused on team-based ethical decision making specific to engineering. As part of a Phase III CCLI project, we are developing E-MEAs, which are open-ended, realistic problems that challenge student teams to recognize and resolve potential ethical dilemmas embedded within a larger engineering problem requiring skills integration. By extending the AMA construct to ethical situations we are able to better identify and understand the various strategies teams use to resolve complex ethical dilemmas. We are both adapting existing cases and creating our own scenarios that bring out differing perspectives, in order to provide a rich body of work that will enable the analysis of studentspsila ethical decision making processes in the context of engineering problem solving. To capture needed process data, we are adapting MEA reflection tools and utilizing PDA devices and team Wikis. Further, to assess performance outcomes, we are utilizing two rubrics, one of which (P-MEAR) was developed previously to assess the ethical dimension of student projects. Data collected will be analyzed using cluster and statistical methodologies to classify students according to performance and strategies employed.

Model-Eliciting Activities: Assessing Engineering Student Problem Solving and Skill Integration Processes*

We are developing model eliciting activities (MEAs) for use in undergraduate engineering education to enhance problem solving ability as well as to provide a means for assessment. The MEA construct, originally developed by math educators, involves a student team developing an analytical model to solve a real-world, open-ended engineering problem and providing formal documentation of the solution procedure for reusability. As we extend these to juniors and seniors, we are evolving both the process and the constructs. In order to study the relationship of MEAs to the problem solving process, we are assessing this process using handheld electronic devices (PDAs) and work measurement software, which capture the predefined steps taken by the students. We have completed a pilot study using PDAs, which showed this approach to be feasible. The design of the pilot study, lessons learned, data obtained, and outcomes requiring additional investigation will be discussed. Much of the data showed a progression through multiple steps of the problem solving process in sequential order.