October 2019 | ISE Magazine 47
For the seventh year in a row, the board of the Sus-
tainable Development Division organized a volunteer
service project with a local nonprofit prior to the start
of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo held May 18-
21 in Orlando, Florida.
With the rising popularity of this event, we added
a second nonprofit this year to handle the demand. In previous
years, we had to turn away potential volunteers.
The first organization selected was Habitat for Humanity
due to our connections from the 2018 event. However, the
ReStore had been closed down since last year, so we decided
to help out the home building side of Habitat.
The second organization selected was Rise Against Hunger.
We learned about it through its submission for the Excellence
in Sustainable Development Award, and it was named the in-
augural winner in 2019. You can read more
about their accomplishments and recogni-
tion in the August issue of ISE or at link.iise.
org/SustainableAward.
The purpose of our volunteering is not
just to help out the organization but also to
provide feedback afterward on the process
improvement opportunities we observed in
order to improve their operations and vol-
unteer experience.
Habitat for Humanity Osceola
Volunteers left the hotel on Saturday
morning, May 18, headed for Apopka,
Florida, an Orlando suburb. Within a large
metro area such as Orlando, there are mul-
tiple Habitat for Humanity affiliates. One
problem encountered immediately was
some confusion about the job site location.
Different Habitat affiliates might be oper-
ating in the same geographic region, and
our volunteer team originally stopped at
the wrong house run by a different affiliate.
With our division’s ongoing engage-
ments with Habitat at different IISE An-
nual Conference locations, we continue
to learn more about the nationwide orga-
nization. Different Habitat affiliates focus
on different regional activities, playing to
their strengths and regional needs and op-
portunities.
The affiliate we worked with prefers to
focus on building large 30 to 50 house de-
velopment initiatives. They operate with
full-time construction professionals leading
teams of volunteers. With the large number
of volunteers, they have personnel dedicat-
ed to volunteer experience and coordination.
New homeowners must work about 200 volunteer hours as
part of their contribution to purchasing a new Habitat home.
The financial model for each new homeowner is complex with
a variety of sources required. We worked side-by-side with fu-
ture homeowners and their friends, as well as with college and
high-school students who had service-hours goals as part of
either their personal dedication or requirements for academic
programs. For example, Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship
program requires that high school students complete service
hours.
On site, safety was key. The site manager “trained us up”
on job site safety basics, including awareness of the heat and
humidity in Orlando. He quickly identified individual volun-
teers’ personal abilities, strengths and interests.
F
Alex Newman and Dan Castle discuss the best way to install blinds at the
Habitat house project in Orlando.
Alex Newman installs curtains in the kitchen of the Habitat house.
48 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
Tackling homes and hunger in Orlando
Our team worked on two dif-
ferent houses on the same block.
One house was prepping for final
inspection and “closing” at the
end of the weekend, and both
were at the “finishing” stage,
so much of our work was done
indoors. Hopefully, our innate
ISE mindset (poka-yoke, con-
servation of resources, “measure-
twice-cut-once”) rubbed off on
the students who worked side-
by-side with us. We had a couple
of good conversations with stu-
dents who showed some polite
interest in our willingness to
share information about indus-
trial engineering.
To learn more about this Habitat affiliate, visit HabitatOrlando
Osceola.org.
Rise Against Hunger
Jason Haulbrook greeted us when we arrived with our over-
sized bus and gave us a quick tour of the space at Rise Against
Hunger. Immediately, we were impressed with the organiza-
tion and cleanliness. There was clear evidence of their work-
place organization activities, which was a significant part of
their documented improvements.
The team split into two groups: One group to wash the sup-
plies from a recent event, another to help get the dried supplies
organized for an upcoming event in Jacksonville.
There were three stations and three sinks for each station.
We staffed one person at each sink with a fourth person to put
the utensils and supplies away on the rack. After observing the
last step, we made some changes to how we intended to stack
the items on the drying rack.
One of our process requirements was to leave the dishes in
the final sink to rinse for at least 15 seconds. Without a clock or
Jason Haulbrook of Rise Against Hunger oversees the labeling of food packages.
Jason Haulbrook of Rise Against Hunger shows how the supplies used in the meal packing events are dried after being washed.
October 2019 | ISE Magazine 49
alarm to control that, we set up a phone with a timer and con-
trolled the workflow. If we overloaded the last sink station, it
might be confusing to know which items were in there a long
time and which ones were just added. So, we set up a simple
kanban system to have one set of dishes being dried, one set
sitting in the sink and one ready to be added. That station was
usually the bottleneck, so we controlled the workflow at that
stage. This helped us avoid mixing up the dishes and ensured
the dishes received enough soaking time.
The second group at Rise Against Hunger finished their
put-away work early, so they got started on adding labels
to empty meal packages. Each package needs to be closely
controlled in case there is food contamination or a bad batch
of supplies.
Because we can’t avoid collecting data, one question we
tried to answer was which method of applying the labels
would be more efficient: using a rubber band and flipping
through the stack or flipping over each package upon com-
pletion.
By using the rubber band (flipping like a book), it took
130 seconds for 22 labels to be applied, for an average of 5.9
seconds per label. Without the rubber band (flipping each
package over), it took 638 seconds for 100 labels, for an aver-
age of 6.4 seconds per label. If they go with the rubber band
method, based on our small sample study, they could poten-
tially save about eight minutes for every 1,000 labels applied.
However, efficiency is not the most important metric for
a nonprofit. It also wants to balance efficiency with the vol-
unteer experience. In our example above, if the faster meth-
od was less enjoyable for volunteers, they would opt for the
slower method every time.
We provided about 20 improvement ideas to Jason based
on our experience as a volunteer that day and our process ef-
ficiency experience at work.
At the end of the day, we tested the meal. It was good and
nutritious, if a little bland in flavor, but Jason explained that
was on purpose: Those receiving the meals may not have the
stomach to handle anything too flavorful or spicy.
To learn more about Rise Against Hunger, visit www.rise
againsthunger.org.
A special thank you goes to all our volunteers: At Habi-
tat for Humanity: Greg Weisenborn, Alex Newman, Kirk
Foster, Narjes Sadeghiamirshah and Dan Castle. At Rise
Against Hunger: Maria Carolina Diaz, John Corliss, Dustin
Diep, Abhishek Taneja, Mizelle Honilla, Caroline Krejci,
Nicholas Eichner, Caroline Krejci and Nicholas Eichner.
If you’d like to join us at our next volunteer service proj-
ect, it will be in New Orleans on May 30, 2020. We are cur-
rently working to find a nonprofit organization in the area
that would like our assistance and recommendations. Con-
tact Brion Hurley at brion@biz-pi.com if you would like to
be involved or know an organization we can connect with.
Check the IISE Annual Conference website for announce-
ments in February or March.
Brion Hurley is a lean Six Sigma master black belt at Business Per-
formance Improvement in Portland, Oregon. He is president-elect of
IISE’s Sustainable Development Division. He graduated from the
University of Iowa with a bachelor’s degree in statistics in 1996, and
a master’s degree in quality management and productivity in 1999.
He teaches lean and Six Sigma classes, facilitates workshops and
events, performs statistical analysis and mentors employees through
improvement efforts. He is the author of Lean Six Sigma For
Good: How improvement experts can help people in need
and help improve the environment.
Greg Weisenborn, Ph.D. is president of the IISE Sustainable
Development Division. He is a tenured faculty member in opera-
tions management at the Department of Management at Fort Hays
State University in Hays, Kansas. Among his research interests
are lean and sustainable systems, supply chain and value chain
management.
Division’s past Annual projects
Here are the community projects undertaken by the Sustainable
Development Division the past seven years at the IISE Annual
Conference & Expo.
• 2013 Beach cleanup, San Juan, Puerto Rico
• 2014 Le Chainon, Montreal
• 2015 Hands on Nashville Urban Farm, Nashville,
Tennessee
• 2016 Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Anaheim, California
• 2017 Pittsburgh Food Bank, Pittsburgh
• 2018 Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Orlando, Florida
Team members found a more efficient way to apply labels
to food packages at Rise Against Hunger.
