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| Eiren Fritz demonstrates how the wheelchair lift works at the Chico State University pool. |
Editor's note: Dirk Vanderloop, a former Dryden worker, now is a lecturer for the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing at California State University, Chico, Calif. He said his projects work at Dryden has helped him in his teaching career. This device was developed during a project management class he taught last fall.
A wheelchair lift that carries people in and out of a swimming pool won first prize at a contest in Los Angeles March 23 for manufacturing and engineering students at colleges and universities. The lift was designed by students at California State University-Chico.
The students, who are enrolled in CSU-Chico's manufacturing technology program, created a wheelchair lift that can be operated by one person, rotates 90 degrees from poolside to pool, and is powered by only a garden hose - features not combined in any commercially available product.
The contest, called the Manufacturing Challenge, was held at WESTEC
98, a manufacturing exposition at the Los Angeles Convention Center. WESTEC,
sponsored by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, is the largest exposition
of manufacturing products and technology in North America.
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| Students and instructors involved with the project include, from left, Lecturer, Dirk Vanderloop, students, David Ebeling, John Perino, Brannon Lain, Larry Thompson, Andrew Beckwith, Sarah Golightly-Epperson and Josh Cahoon. Photos courtesy California State University-Chico |
The CSU-Chico students who participated in the contest are members of the student chapter of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. CSU-Chico competed against 14 colleges and universities that have programs related to manufacturing technology, including Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly Pomona and Fresno State.
The 13 CSU-Chico students and three faculty members who attended the event received a trophy and $35,000 worth of software for winning the Manufacturing Challenge. CSU-Chico last won the Manufacturing Challenge grand prize in 1995, and the university has won one of the top three prizes in five of the last eight years.
"Our program is successful because our students have manufacturing and operations knowledge, but also the hands-on skills," said Dirk Vanderloop, CSU-Chico lecturer in manufacturing technology. "They learn how to communicate with workers, but also deal with senior management."
Vanderloop said the manufacturing technology students collaborated with students from several different university programs. Marketing students studied what other pool lifts were available, production and operations management students did cost accounting, and communication design students researched and created product names and logos.
"In the past the contest focus was just on the technical side of making things," Vanderloop said. "Now the big push in industry is to combine business tasks and be customer-driven, and our students did that."
Along with the judges from private industry who evaluated the pool lift, a number of the 40,000 WESTEC attendees came to the CSU-Chico booth to see it operate, Vanderloop said.
"Lots of people thought we were demonstrating a product already on the market," he said.
The wheelchair lift was set up for a demonstration on campus, Vanderloop said.