How to save $1.03 billion

Ann Arbor, MI – The 2022 Tauber Team Projects resulted in $1.03 billion in savings according to sponsoring company calculations, an average of $49 million per project over three years. Each summer, teams of Tauber Institute business + engineering graduate students work for sponsoring companies to address tough operations challenges, uncover significant savings, and champion major improvements in areas such as data analytics, sustainability, supply chain, and strategy – then present their results to operations leaders at the SPOTLIGHT! Team Project Showcase and Scholarship Competition.

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Since 1993, over a hundred different companies have sponsored Tauber team projects. During their projects, Tauber students experience unparalleled access to the inner workings of top global firms, combined with the expert support of the Michigan Ross School of Business and Michigan Engineering faculty who serve as project advisors, and guidance from Tauber co-directors, communications coaches, research librarians, and a network of alumni mentors. Check out the challenges addressed by four of the twenty-one project teams who are presenting at SPOTLIGHT! 2022 on September 16 in Ann Arbor – Boeing 767, Dell, Stanley Black & Decker, and Stoneridge:

Boeing 767

The Tauber project team of Danielle DeMarco (MBA) and Nicholas McCarthy (EGL BSE-MSE/MSE-IOE) created a plan for stronger integration and streamlined production of the KC-46 in The Boeing Company's Everett, WA facilities. The team developed recommendations and an implementation plan for re-engineering the production flow, carefully considering current factory layouts and first-pass quality goals. 

Dell

Dell, Inc. tasked the Tauber team of William Wang (MBA) and Ryan Wu (EGL BSE/MSE-CSE) to collect the necessary information, develop the code infrastructure, and create the machine learning models needed to use conversational artificial intelligence to build a virtual assistant for handling product returns. The intended results are to increase operational efficiency by creating a 24/7 customer service option, to reduce waste in labor costs for basic return queries, and to drive a self-service adoption into the rest of the company.

Stanley Black & Decker

The Stanley Black & Decker Tauber project team of Meredith Maimoni (MBA &MS-Environment & Sustainability), Arvind Murugesan Rajamallika (MSE-IOE), and Arun Palaniappan (MSE-IOE) found savings for STANLEY Engineered Fastening (SEF) by improving warehouse operations across three sites in Michigan, Iowa, and Kentucky. The Tauber team developed plans to reduce overtime, improve data collection and accuracy, and improve customer service, then made recommendations to scale their improvements across other SEF sites.

Stoneridge

The North American service parts manufacturing portion of the commercial vehicles division at Stoneridge, Inc. is a multi-million dollar business segment that needs to be optimized from a strategic and operational standpoint to achieve the desired financial performance that its current volumes command. The Tauber project team of Timothy Breckwoldt (EGL BSE/MSE-IOE) and Abhishek Ramachandran (MSE-IOE) explored opportunities along the lines of profit enhancement and product line simplification to turn the business back around.

"The students love this event, the faculty love this event, the sponsors love this event, and the judges really love this event!"

Explore Spotlight! 2022

The Tauber Institute for Global Operations is a joint venture between the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and Michigan Engineering, working together with industry partners to facilitate cross-disciplinary education in global operations management. The Tauber Institute is an inaugural recipient of the UPS George D. Smith Prize for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics. For more information visit tauber.umich.edu.