2015-2016 Material Handling Student Design Competition
Competition Rules and Procedures
ACME Shoes Facility Design
Prepared by:
Fortna
333 Buttonwood Street
West Reading, PA 19611
(610) 370-8000
www.fortna.com
Russell D. Meller, Ph.D.
Lisa Thomas, Ph.D.
Prepared for:
College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE)
Design Competition Champion:
Kimberly P. Ellis, Ph.D.
CICMHE Past-President
Virginia Tech
Date Prepared:
August 2015
Sponsored by:
www.CICMHE.org
www.mhi.org/OFS
www.fortna.com
2015-2016 Material Handling Student Design Competition
About the Design Competition
The College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) and the
Order Fulfillment Solutions (OFS) Council sponsor a national team design
competition for students interested in the analysis and design of material handling
systems. Since the first design competition was offered during the 1994-1995
academic year, student design teams have developed material handling system
designs for manufacturing and warehousing operations. Design problems are
typically drawn from the case files of designers and manufacturers of material
handling equipment and their end users. The 2015-2016 case was developed by
Fortna. Cash prizes from CICMHE and OFS are provided to the top three teams
($2000 for first place, $1500 for second place, $1000 for third place) and additional
cash prizes to the academic departments of the team members ($500 per
department). In addition, with the generosity of OFS co-sponsorship, the faculty
advisors from the top three schools will be supported to attend the ProMat 2017
show to be held in Chicago, IL, in April 2017.
ii 2015-2016 Material Handling Student Design Competition
Rules and Guidelines of the Competition
A description of the case as well as these rules and guidelines are provided on the
CICMHE website at www.mhi.org/CICMHE/competition. Faculty advisors
planning to offer the case in their classes can contact CICMHE@mhi.org to receive
the case description and data associated.
 When a faculty advisor has been provided with a link to the data, the clock
begins on a submission deadline of eight weeks. Student teams are limited to
any five week period within those eight weeks to develop their solution,
PowerPoint report, drawings, and cover letter.
 Video submissions are also requested this year. The videos can be recorded
anytime during the eight week window.
 Teams are limited to a total of four members. No more than 2 of the 4 students
may be graduate students.
Only students currently enrolled in
college/university courses are eligible.
 Only one (1) entry per college/university will be accepted.
 Projects may be completed within any five-week period during the 2015-2016
academic year. Any entries that do not provide appropriate start and end dates
for the project will be rejected.
 No entries will be accepted after Friday, June 17, 2015, without prior
CICMHE approval.
 Teams must complete all the work themselves. They may receive only very
limited guidance and direction from faculty advisors or industry professionals.
 A faculty advisor is expected to distribute and explain contest rules to their
student teams, collect the submissions, choose the best entry from their school
and submit the entry within eight weeks from data download to receipt of
entry. The faculty advisor is expected to enforce and certify the start and end
dates for the 5-week project.
 Teams should use the Judges Scoring Sheet as a guideline and checklist to
ensure they have addressed all relevant issues.
 Review by the judges will be blind (no school names provided), so do not
include any team or school identification within your cover letter, the body of
the report, or on your drawings. All this information should be provided on a
separate sheet for use by CICMHE to provide notification about the
competition results.
1  Electronic copies of the reports may be made available on the CICMHE
website. Any posted entries will be anonymous (no school, advisor, or team
member identification).
 A PDF cover letter to the “ACME Shoes Management Team” from the design
team must be provided that clearly and concisely summarizes your team’s
understanding of the opportunity provided and the solution that was
developed.
 The main body of the report must be in PowerPoint slide format as typically
provided in industry. The main body of the PowerPoint presentation must not
exceed 30 slides. Reference may be made to additional slides in separate
PowerPoint files as Appendices containing detailed data tables, analysis,
drawings, etc. in case the judges would like to see additional detail, but the
PowerPoint slides must be able to stand on their own.
 PowerPoint slide content must be clearly understood in a stand-alone context,
but each slide may additionally contain up to 50 words in the notes area of the
slide to explain the slide to the judges as if they were the management team.
If you use this option, make sure you also include a PDF printout of the
PowerPoint slides with the printing of notes option selected in addition to the
regular PDF of your PowerPoint presentation.
 Students are requested to submit two videos this year: a team introduction
video and a project presentation video. The videos account for 10 points out
of a possible 110 points of the total team score.
 Team Introduction Video: This video is intended to introduce the
college/university and project team members in a maximum of 2 minutes.
This will not be shared with the judges until the award recipients have been
selected.
 Project Presentation Video: This video is intended to convince the decision
makers in the organization, most likely mid-level managers, that the solutions
developed and proposed by the team should be adopted (a maximum of 5
minutes). You may use slides and video but should not include university
logos, templates, or other identifying material of the college/university or
team members. Any identifying material in the project presentation could bias
judges and result in disqualification.
 The videos must abide by copyright laws. If copyrighted material is used,
teams should provide correspondence that permits the use of the included
material.
2  Both videos should be posted by the teams as unlisted YouTube videos (such
that competing teams cannot see you solutions). A link to each video shall be
submitted with the project. For teams unable to access YouTube,
arrangements can also be made to directly submit your videos.
 Submit the following documents electronically to CICMHE@mhi.org:
‒ Cover letter to management team from your engineering team in PDF
format [see above],
‒ PowerPoint Report in PDF format [plus optional PDF of PowerPoint with
Notes, see above],
‒ Facility layout drawings as PDF or AutoCAD (.dwg) formats,
‒ Separate file listing advisor and team contact information (CICMHE uses
this information for mailing prize checks to teams and advisors),
‒ Separate file that includes the links to the two unlisted YouTube videos.
‒ A publication quality photo of team members (at least 300 dpi, .jpg file),
‒ Submission email must state the start and end date of the project, and
‒ Electronic submission is completed when confirming email is received
from CICMHE@MHI.org.
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