What does it take to deliver military helicopters to two nations at once,
without slowing production for either? This was the challenge at the center
of Boeing’s annual case competition, where Drexel students across
disciplines put their technical knowledge and business strategy to the test.
The competition, culminating in a winner chosen February 27, pairs students
from the College of Engineering with LeBow’s College of Business to solve a
hypothetical yet real-world-inspired aerospace manufacturing scenario. Along
the way, they’ll merge ideas, create resume-building experience, meet
senior-level Boeing members, and flex skills in the classroom for a cash
prize. There are six teams nominated as finalists this year.
This year’s scenario: Balance a Boeing contract with the UK Ministry of
Defense for Chinook helicopters with Boeing’s existing US Army contract. The
plan had to meet both customer’s needs without disrupting existing schedules
or manufacturing flow.
Team Smith & Co includes Jackson Smith (mechanical engineering), Sameer
Kondapi (business and engineering), Ozan Ertikin (engineering undeclared),
Evan Krajewski, and Louis Martin-Labille (mechanical engineering). Their
solution was to maintain the Army’s production while gradually adding in the
Ministry of Defense's requests, keeping the US on track and gradually
increasing UK output after an 18-month engineering phase.
By divvying the responsibilities based on each team member’s strengths while
maintaining effective communication amongst the group, Smith & Co was
able to effectively incorporate both the technical and business sides of the
challenge. Engineering students took care of production capacity issues,
timeline, and staffing, while LeBow students analyzed risk, cost and
effectiveness.
When it comes to the final competition, the team is ecstatic for the chance
to work with Boeing mentors.
“Being able to work with industry professionals from one of the largest
aerospace companies in the world is not only an exciting experience that I
am looking forward to, but it is one that I will be able to reflect on in
the future,” Kondapi said. “Seeing how these professionals approach problem
solving and applying that to my future thought process when approaching both
business and engineering problems is something that I am very much looking
forward to too.”
Team Fluturoj includes Ojas Mishra (biomedical engineering), Amela Seitaj,
Gavin Moser (electrical engineering), Cam Silbaugh (electrical engineering),
Marcos Trojan (mechanical engineering), and Alex Yim (mechanical
engineering). They focused on LEAN principles, a framework for efficiency
that Boeing uses for cost and waste reduction. The five steps of LEAN are to
define value, map a value stream, create a flow, establish pull, and pursue
perfection. They ran many scenarios using the given resources and created a
production plan that increased manufacturing through added shifts and new
hires while simultaneously modifying our suppliers and delivery times.
“This project pushed us to apply what we’ve learned in class in a much more
practical business and engineering setting,” Seitaj said. “Instead of
following a set method, we had to think critically and adapt to compromising
challenges along the way.”
The team of freshmen is thrilled for the final competition, saying that a
combination of hard work, collaboration, and self-belief got them to the
final round.
“We all are proud of the work, so being able to expand upon it and then
present it is going to be a really cool experience,” Trojan said. “Although
it started out as a joke, from the start we kept saying we were finalists,
and honestly, it felt like it helped during our meetings that we were
confident, because it enabled us to be decisive and just overall helped our
ability to tackle the challenge.”