University industrial engineering students spent some time in jail earlier this semester, but not because they were arrested.
Students in Industrial Engineering 4599 are working with the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s office to streamline processes in several different departments including the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail. The students are applying Lean Technology and systems science principles to analyze and stimulate work flows within the Sheriff’s Office.
“Lean Technology basically is exactly what it sounds like,” said Alex Delgado, industrial engineering senior. “It just takes a look at processes and slims them down or makes them more efficient.”
The students have visited the departments and have begun constructing their plans and recommendations.
“We aren’t fixing broken processes,” said Nicholas Massimini, industrial engineering senior. “Instead, we are just making the existing processes better so different departments can easily share information.”
The main issue is bottlenecks, according to Casey Hicks, public information director for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office. A bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is restricted by a limited number of components or resources. In this case, the bottleneck is redundant data entries, Hicks said.
Students have developed several entity diagrams, which help users understand information, and sequence diagrams, which show an order of events, to develop a plan that will ultimately help the students develop a cohesive plan to unify all departments of the Sheriff’s Office.
The class is split into three groups, each one studying bottlenecks within different departments in the Sheriff’s Office.
“Most of the bottlenecks relate to different kinds of multiple entries in various departments,” Delgado said. “Our group is trying to address the problem of having to fill out multiple forms and just general redundancy in ticketing, [vehicle conditions reports] and accident reporting.”
Students in the class said working with the Sheriff’s Office provides great work experience, but it’s tough to merge what they have learned in the classroom with the work they are currently doing.
“We can’t use … jargon in our presentation because the Sheriff’s Office won’t understand what we are talking about,” Massimini said. “We have to cater to our audience. Dealing with the Sheriff’s Department is very similar to something we could experience in real life.”
Although the project is being conducted for the Sheriff’s Office, it is run through General Informatics, an IT services company based out of Baton Rouge.
“It is a win-win for both the Sheriff’s Office and the students,” said Mohit “Mo” Vij, president and CEO of General Informatics. “The students will get valuable experience, and the Sheriff’s Office will see improvement to their processes.”
 
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Contact Joshua Bergeron at [email protected]