Alex Alekhine
Industrial Engineering Technology Major
Business, Engineering and Technology Category
Bio
My name is Alex Alekhine, and I am a future Industrial Engineering Technology graduate from Missouri Southern State University, May 2021. I have an additional emphasis in manufacturing engineering and automation. I like solving problems, optimizing solutions and thoroughly enjoy traveling. I am currently interning at Olsson Associates with the Power Delivery Team and going to transition to a full-time position in June. If I could somehow travel the world and engineer solutions, that would be the perfect job.
Abstract
Project Title: Reducing Cycle Time of the QA Review Process
This project focused on the QA review processes of Power Delivery projects at Olsson. Olsson is an engineering firm that provides solutions to clients across a variety of disciplines. From March 2020 to February 2021, approximately 4,900 out of 54,000 man-hours were spent on the QA review process or 9.1% of the total hour time. Approximately 3900 of those QA hours were utilized on projects that went over budget, or ~ 10.8%. Comparatively, approximately 1,000 hours were utilized on projects that were under budget, or ~ 5.5%. QA review is an integral part of the projects and it is essential that it is done with efficiency to maintain profitability and customer satisfaction.
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the QA review process of projects that were or close to being over budget, identifying irregularities, determine the root cause, and provide recommendations to improve the process. Using the Six Sigma DMAIC model, three primary project phases were utilized; Define, Measure and Analyze. The define phase focused on understanding the problem, what was critical to the company and the client. The measure phase collected the necessary data to identify irregularities and measure current performance. The analysis phase evaluated the collected data using the knowledge of current employees and statistical tools.