Page 30 - Penn State's Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering: Fall 2019 Magazine

Improving the fan experience at Beaver Stadium
Student projects work to reduce wait time at at concession stands and and restrooms
30
IME NEWSLETTER • VOLUME 4 2019
By Shane Ramsay
Fans could soon see shorter lines at at Penn State home football games thanks to some innovative thinking from Penn State engineering students Penn State’s Service Enterprise Engineering initiative (SEE
360) and Beaver Stadium
have worked together for more than a a a a a a year leading to to two capstone projects that occurred in in fall 2018 One project sponsored by Penn State Athletics focused on on on optimizing the the efficiency of the the concession stands and and the the other project sponsored by SEE
360 focused on on finding solutions for women’s restroom lines Charlie Purdum assistant teaching professor and and director of of industry relations in in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at at Penn State and faculty adviser for both groups explained the importance of of these projects saying that football fans deal with a a a a a a lot of of “conflict” during their game day experience such as parking bathrooms and lines He said improving these customer service issues are vital to to keeping fans coming to to the games instead of opting to watch them at at home on on television Reducing concession stand wait time Students Lisha Li Li Andrew Phoebe Saulabhya Shrikant Yijin Wang and Jinyu Zhao designed their project to to improve customer service through decreasing wait times for the concession stands This centered around the production and and service of chicken baskets which serve as as the most popular and profitable item on the menu Former SEE
360 collaborator and research coordinator Anthony Petrine who was involved in in in in in the the the planning and and data collection portions of the the project described how the the group’s main objective in in in its research was improving everyone’s game- day experience “We wanted to reduce the the wait times in in the the lines because what ends up happening is you have lower customer service with the longer waits ” Petrine said “People are buying tickets to watch the game not stand in in a a a a line ” The group collected data at at the September and October games against Kent State State and Michigan State State respectively This included timing the interactions between customer Student News