Engineering Students,

“One of the most challenging aspects of the Materials Handling Student Design Competition is that there is never an optimal design out there,” says Professor John Usher, of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Louisville. “Trade-offs abound.”

coordinator of the contest this year, Usher speaks both as an advisor to students who have participated in the competition (including a team this year), and as a past judge. Yet precisely what makes this competition so challenging also makes it a valuable learning experience for students.
“Engineering students spend much of their classroom time learning to solve problems out of a textbook,” Usher explains. “The most powerful aspect of this competition is that it helps them realize that real-world design problems are messy.”
He’s not exaggerating. As any materials handling professional knows, real world problems are ambiguous. They require assumptions. And they are always short on data.

John Usher
Professor
Dept of Industrial Engineering
University of Louisville

Diverse in their

approach, the five

winning entries of

this year’s Materials

Handling Student

Design Competition

reveal just exactly

why facilities design

is so challenging