Boon Aik Tan, Joel Brock and Aldas Gubaras are three NIU graduate students with a proud accomplishment under their belts.

The team took first place in a nationwide industrial engineering graduate competition.

“None of us could believe that we had just won a nationwide competition,” Tan said.

The competition is called the International Industrial Engineering (IIE)/Tefen Graduate Student Competition Excellence in Industrial Engineering.

“We all felt that all the hard work had paid off, and now it’s party time,” Tan said. “It’s been an extremely amazing experience for us … Even though it’s been a few months, I am still thrilled.”

The graduate students from NIU named their team BG&T Consulting, because it was an acronym of all of their names.

For Brock, engineering always was an interest.

Tan however, did not want to pursue engineering until he started college.

“I became interested when I started college,” Tan said. “I never heard much about industrial engineering when I was younger. I later on found out that IE is not just another typical engineering discipline. It involves a lot with how to make the most out of our very limited resources.”

He said discipline makes things more effective and efficient.

“One of the major impacts of IE is it helps drive costs down so that goods, products and services are more affordable to everyone,” Tan said.

Tan first heard about the competition and decided to see if any industrial engineers were interested in competing.

“I read about the competition on the IIE Web site,” Tan said. “I gained a lot of confidence after winning the first place in a graduate student simulation paper with Aldas earlier this year. I enjoyed the experience and the process of working together with friends and have learned a lot. That’s why I felt like I should try it again. I sent out e-mail to all IE graduate students; Joel and Aldas expressed their interest and this is how BG&T came along.”

After being selected as the top semi-finalists in Feb., they proceeded into the final presentation on May 19. Fifteen teams submitted the proposals, while five were selected to work on the problem, and three were invited to present the final solution.

According to the Tefen Web site, the prize consisted of $500 for travel to the finals, award plaques and free conference registration. A job interview with Tefen management and a letter of recommendation from Tefen also were included with the reward.

Coming up with the winning solution to the competition is something that the team took great pride in.

“We brain-stormed a lot,” Tan said, “then discussed it with our team adviser, Dr. Omar Ghrayeb. Joel is a full time industrial engineer at UPS. Aldas and I have both worked there as interns. A lot of the problems we encountered were somehow similar to what we had dealt with before.”

Brock felt that the winning solution had to do with presentation technique.

“We covered all the bases, answered all the questions that the competition was looking for, and we were able to communicate it very well through our presentation,” Brock said. “The presentation was the most important part of the competition.”

Winning the competition was a thrill of a lifetime for BG&T Consulting.

“We never thought about winning all three rounds of the competition,” Tan said. “I was really excited when I got the e-mail from Tefen in late February saying that we were one of the top fives. It was about five minutes right before a bunch of us were leaving for South Dakota for the IIE student chapter’s conference.”

The team credits NIU for helping teach and assess the skills necessary for winning the competition.

“The techniques and skills we used were all materials we learned at school here,” Tan said. “This is why we feel so proud of defeating other top engineering schools.”

Joel Brock agreed.

“Definitely, almost every methodology we used to solve the problem was from our IE classes,” he said.