26 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
SEATTLE – On a bright spring Saturday morning
in a used goods retail store south of Seattle, small
teams of process improvement engineers scurried
about on a mission. Amid aisles cluttered with fur-
niture and appliances, they measured, sketched ideas
on notepads, roamed the store perusing the shelves
and immersed themselves into the store’s operations with a
gleam in their eyes.
And when the day was done, they had suggested numerous
improvements to the store staff, many listed on a flip chart that
still hangs in the manager’s office.
The occasion was the IISE Annual Conference Volunteering
Event organized by the Sustainable Development Division. It is
held the day before each IISE Annual Conference & Expo with
a nonprofit agency in the host city. At each event, industrial and
systems engineers offer their time to help streamline processes
and improve efficiency for agencies that seldom have access to
such expertise.
This year’s event, the first held since the last in-person con-
ference in 2019, took place May 21 at the Southcenter Store of
the Habitat for Humanity of Seattle-King County. The inde-
pendently owned reuse stores are operated by local Habitat or-
S
ISEs apply their skills to aid
Seattle nonprofit
Sustainable Development group fixes processes at Habitat store before Annual Conference
By Keith Albertson
Photos by David Brandt and Keith Albertson | IISE
August 2022 | ISE Magazine 27
ganizations. They accept donations of household
items and other goods and sell them at low cost,
with the sales revenue directed toward Habitat’s
mission to build homes for families in need.
The project drew 23 conference attend-
ees who boarded a bus midmorning for the
30-minute ride from the Hyatt Regency Seattle
to the site in an industrial complex in suburban
Tuwk i la.
Dustin Diep, a consultant in Portland, Or-
egon, organized this year’s division outing. He
has been a project volunteer since 2017 and was
glad to have a large and spirited group available
to pitch in at the store.
“I think the standard is we want to try to have
one of these with each Annual Conference,”
Diep said. “First time out (since 2019), we’re just
trying to get things back up. I’m happy we have
something on the ground and volunteers here
getting to do stuff.”
Because the division volunteers have worked
at Habitat sites in other cities, store manager Jesse
Duran realized they could be a great help.
“Having engineers here, people who are
problem-solvers by nature and mechanically in-
clined, is something that we don’t always have
on staff here,” Duran said. “Having engineers
come in and be able to look at things, process
flow and things maybe we can change within
the warehouse, was instrumental for us. And
knowing that they’ve worked with multiple
Habitat stores in the past and aren’t just com-
ing in blindly I think was also one of the most
exciting things – knowing that they’ve got this
experience and they can come in here and they
can change things.”
Maria Carolina Diaz, a member of the IISE
Greater Miami Chapter and a business process
optimization manager for Spirit Airlines, has
joined several of the projects over the last decade
and savors the chance to help a nonprofit.
“I enjoy the opportunity to go and see what is
being done to help out the people in need, look
at how they are doing things and providing sug-
gestions for improvement,” she said. “We help
the people that have nonprofit organizations. For
example, we’ve been to food banks before, we’ve been to other
Habitat stores. And as a process engineer, you can’t improve
what you don’t see, what you don’t experience yourself. You
understand what those people go through and you can defi-
nitely come up with suggestions on how you can make these
people’s lives easier and still meet the goals of the job.”
Easing bottlenecks as donated items arrive
The main issue store staff encountered was developing a more
efficient way to process donated items as they arrived at the
store. As Duran notes, the building’s narrow design made
transporting items more difficult and created bottlenecks in the
cluttered aisles.
The Habitat Store in a suburb south of Seattle is located in a narrow building that
led to bottlenecks in the aisles as donations stacked up on the loading dock. The
volunteers offered ideas to help the store process the items more efficiently.
28 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
ISEs apply their skills to aid Seattle nonprofit
Even as the group was evaluating the store,
workers were unloading furniture from a truck
on the loading dock. With a sporadic but steady
supply of items flowing in, maintaining order
with the inventory remains an ongoing chal-
lenge.
“We have a really long narrow warehouse that
at the very end has a completely different depart-
ment in it,” Duran said. “Some of the bottlenecks
we get (are) when we get our inventory in. ... We
get a lot of items donated to us and because of the
limitations of our warehouse, we always get into
this overcrowded situation where we’re kind of
just pushing up on stuff and it’s spilling out into
the store or into the parking lot. And we want to
avoid that as much as possible.”
To evaluate those issues, and others less ob-
vious, members of the group held their own
gemba walks up and down the aisles of the store
to observe how products were gathered and dis-
played. It offered them a chance to apply the 5S
principles – sort, set in order, shine, standardize
and sustain – which includes what Diaz said is
the key final “S” step, “self-discipline.”
“My group specifically went to all areas,
looked at it from a macro perspective and gave
suggestions for improvement from that stand-
point,” Diaz said. “We walked the whole store.
We suggested to open a door in the side of the
warehouse for easier access. There was another
door in the front that was also blocked and they
were losing that access. So, can I get that orga-
nized?”
Afterward, they sat for a lengthy discussion to share their
ideas with Duran on the various issues they found.
“They talked a lot about utilizing the space that we have in
sections and grouping things together for processing and what
that looks like, what’s the actual flow step-by-step,” Duran
said. “We’re going to have a big sort of day-off party where
we’re closed. We’re going to come clean out and kind of set
up zones in the warehouse so that we can start getting some of
that stuff working and create some of those standard operating
procedures they talked about.”
Members of the IISE student chapter at Oregon State Uni-
versity were among those who took part in the gemba walk
and discussion afterward. Chapter president Ian Replinger, a
senior majoring in industrial engineering and sustainability,
said he worked on a similar project with Diep at a Habitat Re-
Store in Corvallis, Oregon.
“It was good to revisit one of these projects. My highlight
was using ‘first-principles thinking’ and asking why differ-
ent systems existed at the ReStore and what can be changed,”
Replinger said. “Projects like these, specifically the one in
Corvallis, are also great longer term for peer to peer teaching.
My first year in college before I had taken any IE classes, I
learned about Ishikawa diagrams, Five Whys, plan-do-check-
act, Lean and any other number of IE skills. I am working to
bring back our chapter’s involvement with our ReStore, which
was paused in the earlier stages of the pandemic.”
Making the cleaning station transportable
Another area Duran sought help was in sorting and organiz-
ing the store’s cleaning supplies. Many were stashed in a closet,
leading to frequent trips to handle cleanups. His vision was for
a more mobile option to gather the needed items for transport
around the store.
“One of the things that I thought would be fun to do was to
come up with some sort of like Lean Six Sigma type of cleaning
station,” Duran said. “We have an inordinate amount of clean-
ing supplies – brooms and dust pans, garbage cans – and there’s
always a little mess to clean up somewhere. I was thinking if we
had a mobile cart that had all of the necessities that we could
Volunteers divided into teams to sketch out ideas on how to solve the store’s
various issues.
August 2022 | ISE Magazine 29
wheel around or stage in strategic areas within
the store, that would be beneficial for us. And
I would hope maybe an engineer would like
to put their brain into and start thinking about
‘How can we mass produce this? How can we
make this easy to assemble? How can we make
sure that it gets into all of the right places?’”
One team of volunteers did just that, quickly
assembling a cart out of plywood that Duran
said has been in use since the visit.
“I specifically use it myself frequently,” he said.
“We’ve got it in our closet right now. It really is
a good multipurpose tool to be able to wheel
around the store. The group was only here for,
what, four hours total? And to have them, from
start to finish, create, design and fabricate some-
thing and then also make it reproducible, I think
that’s awesome and it’s a really big help for us.”
ISEs bring ‘a great energy’ to project
Throughout the project, one factor was clearly
evident: the group’s enthusiasm for offering help and taking on
the store’s problems. Duran noted the ISEs brought a spark of
energy to the store as they tackled its issues.
“I think everybody was really getting to enjoy it and put
these skills toward something different than their day to day,”
Diep said. “It’s always fun to go out to nonprofits because they
can always use the additional help, and ISEs who have a spe-
cific skill set can be really beneficial for them. Applying that
mindset, identifying those new opportunities to help, and in
this case actually getting to implement some of those and work
on those, is pretty cool.”
Among the volunteers taking part was a group from The
Boeing Co. based in Seattle, part of the division’s effort to keep
local members engaged with the agencies beyond the confer-
ence.
“A lot of them showed some additional passion for wanting
to keep this relationship going, which is one of our big goals,”
Diep said. “Our hope for this sort of volunteering event is if we
partner with the local folks in the area, maybe they can keep
driving these activities forward.”
The volunteers went on gemba walks to look over the shelves and products, and
later made suggestions to the store manager based on their observations.
“I am passionate about looking
at the inefficiencies and what
can we do, even if it’s very little,
to improve the conditions of the
people who are working. It’s
process improvement, period.
Even if it’s something virtual
or something in person, the
goal is to do more with less.”
– Maria Carolina Diaz,
IISE Greater Miami chapter member
30 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
ISEs apply their skills to aid Seattle nonprofit
For the students involved, the project al-
lowed them to apply what they have learned
in their ISE classes in a real-world setting.
“The Seattle event let us do something
beyond just volunteering,” Replinger said.
“It let us work on projects that would bring
longer term community-based change and
apply the interesting concepts we’ve been
learning in class and internships.”
And though working in a retail store is
a bit of a departure from what many of the
engineers usually do, the idea of improving
processes is consistent across all venues.
“For me, it’s not very different because
my role is about doing process improve-
ment,” Diaz said. “I am passionate about
looking at the inefficiencies and what can
we do, even if it’s very little, to improve the
conditions of the people who are working.
It’s process improvement, period. Even if it’s
something virtual or something in person,
the goal is to do more with less.”
Back at the Annual Conference, mem-
bers discussed the project at the Sustainable
Division town hall meeting the following
day. They held a debriefing to go over the
various suggestions and passed them along
to the store.
“I think we got like 30 or something
recommendations out of this across our
group,” Diep said. “So now it’s a matter of
Students from the IISE Oregon State University chapter, from left,
Ian Replinger, Matt Mende and Rosemary Meskell, take part in a
gemba walk in the store.
Group members discussed their findings with Habitat Store
manager Jesse Duran, seated at center.
Ideas for flow improvement were sketched on a flip chart, with a list of suggestions
posted on the wall in the store office.
“The Seattle event let us do something beyond just
volunteering. It let us work on projects that would
bring longer term community-based change and apply
the interesting concepts we’ve been learning in class
and internships.”
– Ian Replinger, IISE Oregon State student chapter member
August 2022 | ISE Magazine 31
which ones can they do, where the quick wins, the low-hang-
ing fruit is, and then actually putting the people on the floor to
be able to help implement those and guide that activity.”
Duran was grateful for the ideas and the help. He still main-
tains a large flip chart full of suggestions pinned on his office
wall.
“Having everybody in, watching everybody work and think
about the issues that they saw, and then being able to sit down
and have conversations with everybody, it was great,” he said.
“They had a great energy and it kind of just permeated the
store.”
He also recommends to any future nonprofit director of-
fered the chance to host the division to accept the help with
open arms and an open mind.
“I would say don’t skip on the opportunity because you can’t
beat it,” he said. “And second, just listen, listen and talk. I think
that’s the most important thing we can do. I’ve been in retail
management for most of my career so I’ve got a pretty good
idea of how a building operates. ... But having a large group of
people with a lot more knowledge than me on a lot more topics
than me, it’s always beneficial.
“I encourage everyone to take all of the advice, all of the
suggestions. Not everything is going to work for our store but
everything is a good suggestion and everything that they said
was valuable in some way. Whether or not we can implement it
here, it’s something that got us to think about an issue we were
having a little bit differently. Or just something that we know
that this is an issue and we know that maybe this solution isn’t
the thing, but it’s being brought again to attention. And it’s
something that we then have another idea to look at and try.”
Keith Albertson is managing editor of ISE magazine. Contact him at
kalbertson@iise.org.
Volunteer project is a division staple
The IISE Sustainable Development Division includes approximately 2,000 members, with about 70% students and 30% industry
professionals. Its stated mission is “to advance the welfare of humankind by applying the resources and creative abilities of the
industrial engineering profession to the development of sustainable societies.”
In addition to the volunteer project held at the IISE Annual Conference, the division offers three awards: Excellence in Sustainable
Development Award, Excellence in Teaching Sustainability Award and Best Student Paper.
The division’s previous service projects held at the Annual Conference include:
• 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
• 2019: Habitat for Humanity and Rise Against Hunger, Orlando, Florida
These volunteers took part in the division’s volunteer project in Seattle: Amanda Pham, Brion Hurley, Cilla Pemberton, Dustin
Diep, Eliza Marcy, Everly Manzana, Gabriela Renta Lopez, Gil Perez Roman, Ian Replinger, Jessica Reed, John Corliss, Renaud Jean-
Gilles, Rosemary Meskell, Stephanie Gonzalez, Evelio J. Echavez III, Gregory Weisenborn, Charlene Nichols, Matt Mende, Brandon
Pittawat, Maria Carolina Diaz, Ana Kaiulani, Andrea Sosa Luviano and Kyle Mullins.
For more on this year’s project, watch a video with highlights and interviews at youtube.com/iisechannel.
Volunteers were able to design and assemble a mobile cart that
allows staff to move cleaning supplies more easily through the
store where needed.
Photo courtesy of John Corliss
