Industrial engineering cohort students place in simulation competition
Published: Jul 20, 2023 1:25 PM
By Carla Nelson
Two industrial and systems engineering graduate students, who are members of the cohort established by the educational partnership between Auburn and Radiance Technologies, were recently recognized for outstanding projects in the biannual Simio Student Competition. Ted Masternak and Matthew Ross placed fourth in the competition.
Simio is a simulation software leader in the academic and commercial community. The company takes a commercial simulation project and reimagines it for the competition to give the students a realistic project. Jeff Smith, the Joe W. Forehand, Jr. professor of industrial and systems engineering, encourages students to participate in the competition. Graduate students enrolled in the Discrete Event Simulation course must complete a project each semester, and the Simio competition is an option.
Masternak and Ross, whose team name was MasterRoss, used the Simio modeling tool to model an international currency exchange bank. The team spent around 100 hours to develop and test the model and generate the project documentation.
“We had to model the financial transactions, including fees and timelines, within given constraints, maximizing daily profit with low customer wait times,” Masternak said. “We were very happy to place fourth in this world-wide competition, exceeding our expectations.”
Ross agreed.
“It is an honor to be selected for our project submission, let alone earn fourth among over 125 submissions,” he said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to show off our skills in a friendly competition.”
Smith said that Masternak and Ross did an excellent job with their project. He added that they had a good balance between model development, experimentation and analysis and their write-up and video presentation were clear, concise and easy to understand.
“It is obvious that the spent quite a bit of time on the project and collaborated closely with one another throughout the semester, both important pedagogical goals for project assignments,” Smith said.
Masternak and Ross both felt Smith was a big support throughout the project.
“He quickly provided useful answers to general questions we had on tools and techniques,” Masternak said. “More importantly, his class prepared us with the knowledge and skills to develop a successful project submission.”
To learn more about the winners and their projects, click here.
Media Contact: , carla@auburn.edu, (334) 844-1404
Ted Masternak and Matthew Ross, whose team name was MasterRoss, used the Simio modeling tool to model an international currency exchange bank.
