Research and Development Funding for University of Waterloo Business Engineering Projects

Your organization does not need to be eligible for government funding for research and development in order to have an opportunity to work with some of the brightest young minds in the region!  The University of Waterloo’s Engineering Faculty is currently calling for proposals to be a part of Management Sciences and Engineering Design Projects with senior undergraduates enrolled expecting to graduate in 2014.

Overview of Management Engineering Design Projects

Within the faculty of Engineering, the University of Waterloo’s Management Engineering Design Projects are carried out by undergraduates enrolled in the university’s esteemed program.  For each student in their senior year a mandatory 12-month team project focuses on solving an open-ended problem for local for-profit or not for profit organizations.

Examples of Management Engineering Design Projects

Successful past projects include the following:

• Optimization of the work processes and the facility layout of a firm that re-processes re-usable hospital instruments
• Design of an efficient route for the distribution of goods for a big dairy producer
• Design of a surgery scheduling system for a Region of Waterloo hospital
• Design of a decision support tool that optimally allocates space to different categories of goods for an international retailer.
• Design of an inventory and project management system for a large construction company.

Project Details and Length

In teams of 3-4 students, a total effort of approximately 1000 hours over the course of the 12-month project is applied to a local business collaboration software development project.   As per the timeline outlined below, the project is broken into three 4-month terms beginning in May of 2013.  During the second 4-month term organizations will have the opportunity to hire a student(s) from the project team as a co-op placement; otherwise the term will break from work on the project.  Each project is supervised by a faculty member in the Department of Management Sciences.

How Your Organization Can Get Involved

If your organization has a problem/issue that is affecting its management and efficiency, contact us to discuss opportunities of turning this problem into a design project. Your level of participation can vary from offering a design project idea to providing the student teams funding and access to your facilities.

Timeline for Management Engineering Design Projects

The 2013-2014 Program Schedule for the Management Engineering Design Projects is as follows:

January – April 2013:  Sourcing of projects from industry

Term #1, May – August 2013: Determination of the project need, the functional requirements of the problem, the project scope, and the project plan to complete the identified deliverables over the year, and the conceptual design.

Term #2, September – December 2013:  Break – Companies involved have the opportunity to hire the students for a co-op term.   Organizations looking to hire students or recent grads are encouraged to consider one of the many available Hiring Grants for Small Business.

Term #3, January – April 2014:  Detailed design, implementation, and verification, as well as presentation of the final design at the Management Engineering Design Symposium

Explore Government Grants for Hiring and a Variety of other Canadian Government Funding Options

If you are a small to medium-sized Canadian company with between 15-500 employees and have been incorporated for at least two years please contact a Canadian Government Funding Expert to learn more about available small business grants and small business loans Ontario.   You are also invited to join us for an upcoming Free Canadian Government Funding Workshop in your area.   And please don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn!