Warwick students engage with industry to solve real-world problems

Warwick-Ford “GearUp” Industry Challenge

Warwick Manufacturing Group’s (WMG) 2 stage industry challenge event co-sponsored by Ford focused on the topic of “last mile delivery” attracting 130 students from across WMG’s PG, UG and PGR programmes along with entries from other Warwick departments.  

GearUp 2023’s final pitch day successfully concluded with students solving real-world problems. The last mile delivery challenge tackled the complex and crucial task of efficiently and effectively delivering goods from a distribution centre or hub to the end consumer’s location. The challenge gave students the opportunity to work with a leading automotive corporation using innovative approaches, collaborate with stakeholders, and use technology to optimise problems.

Stage 1

12 student teams working with WMG and Ford mentors were asked to think through solution design. Teams came up with excellent ideas to improve the efficiency, lower the cost and reduce the environmental footprint of last mile delivery – which constitutes approximately 53% of the total cost of delivery!

Stage 2

The second stage focused on MVP design and testing – student teams worked on a variety of solution sets including data dashboards, novel apps, animations, flyers and mind maps to represent the ideas’ first prototypes. The judges panel then selected four to proceed to the final.

The final pitch day commenced with opening remarks from WMG Dean Prof. Robin Clark – who punctuated the need for constant innovation and a strong customer-driven approach in solution design and delivery.

WMG students pitched to a panel of 7 judges: Tom Thomson – Ford, Ray & Sneha – ex-IAE students and now successful entrepreneurs and executives, James WMG supply chain business acceleration expert, Danny WMG Micromobility expert, and Prof. Dan Nunan – WMG Vice Dean.

But, there could be just one winner, and team “HiveHub” with WMG students representing 4 different PG programmes were declared winners.

The judges believed that HiveHub presented a strong value proposition which was in line with upcoming industry and govt. proposals to ease the last mile delivery problem – i.e. via the use of strategically placed residential “hubs”. The overall pitch too was well delivered, with good use of data and a well thought out explanation of how the MVP and pilot study would be deployed.

We are now looking to scale-up GearUp 2023 in the new academic year to be all-campus activity during Sept-Dec, 2023, where with Ford’s assistance we hope to attract an even higher number of entries and conduct the event on a larger scale.