Pittsburg State University Selects Guardian’s Foundry Software

Feb. 8, 2006
Software helps students understand manufacturing process planning, management

According to Guardian Software Systems , Pittsburg State University will implement a Professional Version of the company’s software platform at its College of Technology, in Pittsburg, KS.

Guardian explains that university’s the Engineering Technology programs are “constituent driven,” so faculty members are encouraged to respond quickly to recommendations made by the industrial advisory board. One recent recommendation is to emphasize to students different aspects of the manufacturing process, as a way to prepare them for the difficulties of projecting product costs, and comparing actual performance costs to those projections.

Now, PSU’s objective is to provide its students the opportunity to learn how to: define time standards, with a detailed description of each process; estimate the costs of different manufacturing processes, including scrap predictions, overrun percentages, labor costs, and variable and fixed overhead costs, etc.; and to document which results allow for comparison of cost projections versus actual costs.

PSU assistant professor Thomas Hahn, contacted Guardian Software Systems, and Guardian president Stephan Hoppe offered his firm’s help the faculty to assist the university. “By providing this software as an educational tool to Pittsburg State University,” Hoppe states, “we are helping students obtain a better understanding of all aspects of process planning and management. This will help facilitate the turning out better educated, and more productive potential employees, thus raising the bar for the entire industry.”

PSU students will use the package in their Manufacturing Production Control, Management and Engineering Economy classes, and for their senior design projects, in which they spend one semester designing and one semester building and testing actual machinery and equipment.