Tech-Connect is the annual technical exhibition held at IIT Bombay to showcase projects done by IIT-Bombay’s students and faculty. Tech-Connect offers a platform for knowledge-exchange between the industry and the academia which helps in attaining sustainable progress. This was Tech-Connect’s second running year when it was organized during Techfest-2011 (7th - 9th Jan.) in collaboration with IRCC, IIT-Bombay.
The department of IEOR participated in Tech-Connect for the first time. A stall was put up and the students presented some of the projects they were working on. The projects demonstrated a wide variety of applications of Operations Research.
Students also designed various posters which displayed at a glance the flavour of the work being done in the Department; the softwares which are used as well as the people who contributed to a great extent to the developments in the field of IEOR.
Some of the projects that were presented by the students:-
- Equivalence between Game Theory and Mathematical Programming
- Some funny applications of Markov Chain
- Sodoku as an Integer Program
- Simulation of an unreserved Ticketing System in Mumbai
- Simulation of Line Testing Machines
- Vehicle Routing Problems
- Transfer Pricing and Transportation Cost Allocation in a Global Supply Chain
- Stock Cutting Problems
- Trading Agent Simulation
- Network Level Investment to Increase Rail Capacity
Owing to the closeness of the projects with real-life problems, the IEOR kiosk attracted a huge audience spanning all age groups and ranging from school pupils to college-goers from both engineering and science backgrounds to working-class people from a wide spectrum of professions. The knowledge levels of the visitors vis-à-vis the field of IE & OR were varied too. Some of them were not aware of the existence of this field whereas others who were working in the areas were quite clued in to the current activities and trends of the area. Tech-Connect provided the students the golden opportunity to create contacts with and get hands-on-feedback from people working in the areas of Analytics, Quality Management, Supply Chain Management, Networking, Routing etc. Most of the visitors showed great enthusiasm and interest to know about the various techniques, algorithms and heuristics being used to solve real-life Industrial Engineering and Operations Research problems.
In summary, Tech-Connect was a unique learning experience both for the IEOR students as well as the people from all walks of life who visited the stall as they all got a chance to gain a better insight into the theoretical and practical aspects of IE & OR. Also, presenting their ideas and answering the questions of the visitors helped the students to improve their communication skills. Overall, Tech-Connect 2011 was a well received event and garnered a positive response.
We would like to thank the faculty and all the students of IEOR without whose useful inputs and active participation the event would not have been the immense success that it was. We hope that the momentum would be carried forward in the next edition of Tech-Connect.