Georgia Tech college students revolutionize meals distribution for native nonprofit

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. – A bunch of eight Georgia Tech college students used their capstone undertaking to assist remodel the best way an area nonprofit feeds folks. 

Ryan Jones, govt director of Norcross nonprofit Neighborhood Cooperative Ministries (NCM), says the rising want for meals in Gwinnett County was placing a pressure on their assets. 

“We served 27,000 people final 12 months and we’ll serve about 6,000 extra this 12 months than we did final 12 months,” Jones mentioned. 

He says when you’re a nonprofit, it’s important to give you artistic options to costly issues.

“So, we heard in regards to the Georgia Tech capstone undertaking, and it was simply absolutely the good answer for our points with our meals program,” Jones mentioned. 

“It isn’t day-after-day {that a} smaller nonprofit group within the Atlanta space has entry to Georgia Tech assets or will get to work with college students at Georgia Tech,” mentioned Julia Flake. 

She is likely one of the eight college students in Georgia Tech’s Industrial and Methods Engineering program who took on NCM’s logistical points as their capstone undertaking. 

She says getting sure meals from the Atlanta Group Meals Financial institution might be aggressive, which means NCM needed to depend on costlier store-bought meals. 

So, the scholars created and coded a notification system that sends alerts to the workers’s telephones when the Meals Financial institution has objects they want. 

“In order that manner, NCM staff can shortly go surfing, add that merchandise to the cart they usually’re capable of buy larger pallets of meals at a less expensive fee than at retail value,” Flake mentioned. 

In addition they did an evaluation and redesign of NCM’s warehouse to make it way more area environment friendly. 

“Optimizing their warehouse to have the ability to go from storing 33 to 56 pallet areas so they might retailer extra pallets coming from the Atlanta Group Meals Financial institution,” Flake mentioned. 

“The place we are able to absorb extra meals and say sure to extra donations,” Jones mentioned. 

In addition they made a brand new on-line level system for purchasers of NCM to allow them to get more energizing meals extra typically, as a substitute of solely visiting the pantry as soon as a month. 

All these modifications Flake says are having a big effect. 

“We quantified the quantity of purchasers, extra purchasers that they’d be capable to serve month-to-month to round 566 extra purchasers month-to-month, which doubles the quantity of folks that they can serve beneath the poverty line of their service space,” Flake mentioned. 

A godsend for this nonprofit who wanted professional optimization.

“We frequently haven’t got the time or typically the ability units that they introduced. And so they’ve saved us a ton of cash and that is saved us a ton of time. And so they’ve left us in a scenario the place we’re capable of distribute an excellent deal extra meals for a less expensive value as properly,” Jones mentioned.   

It’s a real-world software with actual world implications for these college students’ expertise. 

“We noticed that we’re serving to actual folks in our group. We are able to really make a constructive impression right here, we are able to really implement one thing that may really make a distinction,” Flake mentioned. 

Jones says he hopes when folks see how these college students used engineering expertise to assist them out that they perceive nonprofits like his may use assist from folks with virtually any ability set.