Engineering Senior Design Projects

The Engineering senior design project is a two-semester effort jointly supervised by St. Mary’s faculty and engineers from the sponsoring organization. Seniors work on solving open-ended problems submitted by and relevant to our industrial collaborators.

The senior project culminates the professional education received at St. Mary’s. Each project is a comprehensive effort: working in conjunction with an industrial internship, the students must apply their educational experience and expertise to identify, plan and design a practical solution to an actual problem.

The end product is a professional report and presentations given before students, faculty, industrial panelists and the sponsoring organization. Interdisciplinary teamwork among students is encouraged through the application of concepts, skills and knowledge acquired in the classroom.

Our dream is that every student gets to do deep engineering work by the time they graduate. Because Labatt is an innovator in its field, our partnership with them has been a tremendous résumé-builder for our students.”

Rafael Moras, Ph.D.
Professor of Industrial Engineering

Previous Sponsors

Senior design projects have been sponsored by organizations such as:

  • H-E-B
  • Labatt Food Service
  • Frito-Lay
  • T-Mobile
  • Direct Source Meats
  • Southwest Research Institute
  • SA Lighthouse for the Blind
  • Meals on Wheels
  • Texas Diaper Bank
  • Cogeco Peer One
  • Gonzaba Medical Group
  • Bergstrom
  • City of San Antonio Brush Collection Service
  • San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind
  • San Antonio River Authority
  • NetDataPad
  • Najim Center for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility
  • Texas Roofing
  • Cox Manufacturing
  • Pristech
  • Zachry Construction

Projects

SmHeart Stethoscope

Friedrich Air Conditioning Coil Calorimeter Design
Sponsor: Friedrich Air Conditioning

Seq. VI Fuel Econ. Test: Fuel Disp. Automation and Seq. VI Fuel Econ. Test: Oil Level Check
Sponsor: Intertek

Flow Loop Leak Test System
Sponsor: EFI Global Inc.

A Better Cart
Sponsor: Academic Technology Services, St. Mary’s University

Alderete Park, StMU & Woodlawn Pathway Design
Sponsor: San Antonio River Authority

AI System to Classify Faulty Cross Arms in Poles

VT SAA Layout Design
Sponsor: VT San Antonio Aerospace

Cost-Benefit Analysis for Mfg. Expansion
Sponsor: The H-J Family of Companies

Facilities Improvement
Sponsor: San Antonio Public Works Dept.

Automation and Inventory Control
Sponsor: The New Braunfels Smokehouse

Reliable Staffing Mobile App
Sponsor: Reliable Staffing

Disaster System Engineering

Smart Paint Drone 2.0

Drone Stabilization

Bridge Crack Detection

2020 Projects

Project Title
SKORE (Smart Keyboard Operated by Robotic Educator)
Sponsor
Internal

Project Title
Drone Assisted Bridge Inspection (DABI)
Sponsor
Internal

Project Title
Solar Panel Bar (SPB)
Sponsor
Internal

Project Title
Solar Emergency Power Trailer (SEPT)
Sponsor
JWS Diversified

Project Title
San Antonio International Airport Procurement
Sponsor
San Antonio International Airport

Project Title
Automatic Aircraft MRO Supply Chain Fulfillment and Delivery System
Sponsor
VT San Antonio Aerospace

Project Title
Hot Dog Bun Slicing Machine
Sponsor
Bimbo Bakeries

Project Title

Friedrich’s Labman Software
Sponsor
Friedrich Air Conditioning

Project Title
FEA and Redesign of Refrigeration System
Sponsor
Friedrich Air Conditioning

Project Title

SAE Mini Baja 2019
Sponsor
The Society of Automotive Engineers

Project Title
SOSs Stations for the San Antonio River Paths
Sponsor
San Antonio River Authority

Project Title
Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI) Automated Safety Shower System
Sponsor
TBRI

Project Title
Wheelchair for Lower Extremity Amputees
Sponsor
Lance Corporal Jim Moore (Family)

Project Title
San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Parking and Traffic Improvement
Sponsor
San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo

Project Title
Project Management Handbook for VT SAA
Sponsor
VT San Antonio Aerospace

Project Title
Improvement of the Efficiency of Hangar Operations at VT SAA
Sponsor
VT San Antonio Aerospace

Project Title
Productivity Improvement of the Urology Pre-Anesthesia Unit at the VA Hospital
Sponsor
San Antonio VA Hospital

2019 Projects

Project Title
Productivity Improvement at Direct Source Meats

Sponsor
Direct Source Meats

Engineering students at Direct Source Meats.

Description
Labatt Food Service’s most recent major investment was the Direct Source Meats (DSM) Cooked Meats facility. At the time of this report, the facility was a production center for beef barbacoa, pork tamales, smoked beef brisket, smoked turkey, shredded chicken and other Mexican food items. The demands for products like barbacoa experienced by DSM were above what management had forecast. The purpose of this senior design project was to analyze DSM’s production line to determine bottlenecks and inefficient procedures in order to create a more effective production schedule that benefited the company and its employees.

Project Name
Implementation of a DevOps Environment at Cogeco Peer 1

Sponsor
Cogeco Peer 1

Engineering students at Cogeco.

Description
Labatt Food Service’s most recent major investment was the Direct Source Meats (DSM) Cooked Meats facility. The purpose of this senior design project was to facilitate the process of releasing and integrating code changes at Cogeco Peer 1, a cloud-hosting company. The project team implemented a “DevOps” environment that introduces introduced continuous integration of code within the systems. Continuous integration describes the merging of all developer coding work in progress, which in turn allows code releases several times a day. The project team created a DevOps environment with metrics and cost analysis which can be adopted by Cogeco Peer 1.

Project Title
Design and Implementation of a Digital Dashboard for Labatt Food Service

Sponsor
Labatt Food Service

Description
The purpose of this project was to create a digital dashboard to provide managers and team leaders the ability to use a visible report on group and individual performance. The project was implemented for Labatt’s warehouse divisions in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Lubbock and Albuquerque.

Project Title
Facility Layout Design and Process Improvement for Meals on Wheels

Sponsor
Meals on Wheels

Engineering students at Meals on Wheels.

Description
This senior design project consisted of a design for a new layout for the Meals On Wheels meals production floor that supports the expected increase in customer demand and also reflects process improvements in their current facility. With the increase in a number of clients over the years, further growth became infeasible due to capacity limitations of the current facility. After conducting a series of observations and using industrial engineering tools such as Six Sigma Quality, Statistics, Engineering Graphics, Optimization and Computer Simulation, the senior design team created a new design that eliminates the inefficiencies presented in the current layout.

Project Title
Implementation of an Inventory Control System for the Texas Diaper Bank

Sponsor
Texas Diaper Bank

Engineering students at the Texas Diaper Bank.

Description
The objective of this senior design project was to implement and automate a new warehouse management system for the Texas Diaper Bank (TXDB) in San Antonio to allow the company to efficiently and accurately track inventory. The team collected data from past months to forecast the demand for diapers, which was essential to determine the number of diapers needed from the suppliers of the TXDB, Kimberly-Clark and Jet.com.

Project Name
Continuous Improvement Process Analysis for Bergstrom Inc.

Sponsor
Bergstrom Inc.

Description
The objective of this senior design project was to identify opportunities of improvement for the following processes: Plastics regrind, statistical process control, plastic process parameters, and product assembly regarding internal issues and external issues at Bergstrom Inc., a manufacturer for climate control systems. The continuous improvement focused on internal and external assembly and plastics issues was to identify their primary cause and improve the efficiency of assembly line production.

2017 Project Highlights

Become a Sponsor

We would like your input on what types of student projects and partnerships the Engineering Department might support. We create interdisciplinary and cross-functional learning with students, faculty and organizations to provide opportunities for collaboration on real-world projects. Please fill out this form multiple times if you would like to suggest more than one partnership contact.

  • Engineering Senior Design Project Sponsorship Form

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