Lisa Anderson presents the Manufacturer’s Council of the Inland Empire Innovation Award to Harvey Mudd College Students for their work with Purosil. The award was presented in February at the MCIE’s 2018 Manufacturers’ Summit.
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Harvey Mudd Students Lauded for Manufacturing Innovation
In late 2016, Purosil LLC, a silicone hose manufacturer in Corona, California, was losing revenue and customers on their formed hose product line. In an effort to change course, the company reached out to Professor Kash Gokli and Harvey Mudd College engineering students, hoping that their knowledge of modern manufacturing practices and their innovative ideas might be the answer. That turned out to be the correct decision: Within a year, the students had helped Purosil employees implement a new way of manufacturing that increased production and efficiency and boosted revenue by $3.1 million annually.
The students, juniors Ankoor Apte, Bohan Gao, Giulia Castleberg and Rachel Perley, and their advisor, engineering professor Kash Gokli, won the Manufacturer’s Council of the Inland Empire Innovation Award for their work with Purosil. The award was presented in February at the MCIE’s 2018 Manufacturers’ Summit.
With funding from the Henry E. and Gayle Riggs Fellowship in Engineering Management, a team of students worked at Purosil part-time over two semesters, doing research to determine the source of the company’s problems. Apte, Gao, Castleberg and Perley then spent 10 weeks in summer 2017 working full time at Purosil, implementing their proposed solutions.
Published in Harvey Mudd College on March 5, 2018