Project Competition by Industrial Engineering

The event, where the graduation projects of the AGU Industrial Engineering students competed, concluded.

The event was hosted by the AGU Industrial Engineering department, which will graduate its first students this year. Four graduation projects, 3 of which are supported by the TÜBİTAK Funding Programme for Industrial Graduation Projects (2209-B), competed at the event.

Throughout the year, student made projects on an industrial engineering problem with the aim of increasing efficiency, economizing costs and boosting competitive power of leading companies in their respective areas, ASELSAN, FNSS, TURKCELL, and DİTAŞ, under the academic supervision of Prof. İbrahim Akgün, Dr. Muhammed Sütçü and Dr. Selçuk Gören. Within the projects, students collected data from companies and analyzed them, created mathematical models and artificial intelligence algorithms based on the data, generated solutions to the problems and proved their contribution to the companies.

The competition was organized aiming for an external evaluation of projects by both the academia and industry. Accordingly, the jury was composed of Prof. Lale Özbakır from Erciyes University, Assoc. Prof. Erkan Köse from Nuh Naci Yazgan University, Koray Kılınç from ASPILSAN, Gökhan Yücel from Başyazıcıoğlu Tekstil-BAMEN, Gökmen Kara from Boyteks Tekstil and Metin Özbek from Yataş Bedding. Many company representatives and students attended the competition as listeners. The "Supplier Evaluation Process in Defense Industry: Optimization of the Criteria Cluster" project run by Umut Yapır and Şükrü Yasin Güven under the company supervision of Dr. Murat Aslan and academic supervision of Prof. İbrahim Akgün won the competition. In the project, students aimed to optimize the criteria cluster of ASELSAN for the supplier selection and evaluation process both quantitatively and qualitatively with machine learning, statistical and mathematical models. They succeeded in economizing human and financial resources used in the supplier evaluation process of ASELSAN by half.

Rector Prof. İhsan Sabuncuoğlu spoke at the award ceremony. He wished graduating students success in work and business life and gave them some advice. Highlighting the importance of doing projects in his speech, Prof. Sabuncuoğlu said: "You will change many companies or lines of work until the end of your career. Experience is experience. No experience is bad for you." He advised them to pursue a career they like and feel excited about.

Industrial Engineering Head Prof. İbrahim Akgün stated that graduation projects are important parts of university-industry cooperation and its driving force. He added that doing graduation projects is a process which demands from students to use all academic and social skills they have acquired during their education. Prof. Akgün reminded that four graduating students received job offers from the companies with which they completed their projects and that those projects are the last ring in the chain of the university-industry cooperation consisting of several components such as three different internships lasting at least 22 weeks in total, creating industry-focused projects at each class, having some classes entirely in companies. Prof. Akgün thanked all participating company representatives for their help and support in all these steps.

Later, the students who did projects received their certificates and monetary awards. Rector Sabuncuoğlu presented the students their certificates.