UA engineering student places second in engineering conference

A senior industrial engineering student at the University of Arkansas has placed second in competition at a Kansas State University-hosted engineering conference in Manhattan, Kan.

Keegan Henderson placed in the final two at the Industrial Engineers South Central Regional Conference with a thesis entitled, “Baseball Portfolio Optimization,” which explores the use of mathematical modeling techniques to assist baseball general managers with investing wisely in the baseball free agent market during the off-season, according to a UA statement.

Henderson analyzed a number of performance metrics and modeled the statistical properties associated with player performance for these metrics. In so doing, he was able to construct an optimization model designed to assist managers in building the best baseball roster subject to a variety of cost and position constraints.

Henderson’s modeling approach empowers organizations to carefully balance the risk of a large and expensive contract with the potential benefit of additional wins that a new player can bring to their team. It also lived up to the “wide array” part of the university’s description for what industrial engineers do — “figure out a better way to do things, while working in a wide array of professional areas.”

Some of those areas include management, manufacturing, logistics, healthy systems, retail, service, ergonomics, and now, apparently, baseball. Henderson was one of 12 University of Arkansas students to participate in the conference.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are 241,100 industrial engineers employed in the U.S. with 10-year growth expectations of 1%. Industrial engineers primarily “find ways to eliminate wastefulness in production processes” and “devise efficient systems that integrate workers, machines, materials, information, and energy to make a product or provide a service.”