Tulkoff Food Products Inc. has been a Baltimore business since the 1930s and is particularly famous for its horseradish products. But processing two million pounds of raw horseradish each year has produced a big problem for the company. The process used to clean the roots generates 100,000 pounds of horseradish peels and 2.2 million gallons of dirty water annually. It costs the company $100,000 to send almost 250,000 pounds of discarded peels, dirt and sludge waste to a landfill each year. Tulkoff wanted to better align this process with its environmental initiatives. What would it take for the company to green its processes and reduce its costs?
This condiment conundrum was one of 12 consulting projects featured at the 2010 Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) Senior Conference, held on Thursday, December 9. More than 300 people gathered in Riggs Alumni Center to view the storyboards and hear student teams describe their consulting projects on a night that capped off months of hard work and preparation.
These consulting projects form the senior practicum portion of the honors program. QUEST, part of the Smith School’s Undergraduate Fellows Program, is operated jointly with the A. James Clark School of Engineering and admits students from the Smith School, the Clark School and the College of Mathematical, Computer and Physical Sciences.
Seniors in the QUEST program spend the better part of the fall semester working with a faculty advisor on consulting projects for corporations, all of which have real-life importance and implications. This year student teams worked on 12 consulting projects for 10 companies in industries that ranged the gamut from missile defense to manufacturing to health care.
Tulkoff executives Philip Tulkoff, CEO, and Buddy Dietz, vice president of operations, were in the audience as QUEST seniors Jeffrey Lue, Yasmeen Thome, Augusto Tono, Melanie Wong and Jesse Wu—who called themselves “Saucy Solutions”—presented their solution to Tulkoff’s dirty problem. During the presentations, QUEST students describe their methodology, how they evaluated their ideas, and how they conducted benchmarking exercises. The background work is often highly quantitative as they produce models and databases to process information.
Saucy Solutions considered but discarded options to use Tulkoff’s horseradish peels to deodorize manure or distill horseradish vodka. They also looked at several different kinds of equipment that could be deployed at different phases in the production process. Their final recommendation was a decanter centrifuge, a machine capable of separating peels, water and dirt. It leaves the water so clean that it can be reused to wash another batch of horseradishes. The students also found a local composting company that would take away the dry dirt and peels for less than the company is currently spending on landfill fees. The new process would save the company about $65,000 each year and generate zero waste—a big bragging point for a company interested in improving its sustainability.
Giving students the opportunity to work with real-life executives on real-life business problems is a win-win situation for both students and businesses. “The funny thing,” said Dietz, “is that we hired a consultant to look at this same problem a year ago—and paid him more—and didn’t get a solution. We got better results from the students. We definitely got our money’s worth.” Dietz said that the company is already pricing decanter centrifuges and plans to get them up and running soon.
Each of the consulting projects resulted in a dynamic learning experience for the students as well as creative, real-life business solutions for the sponsoring companies. Dietz, who was the project champion for the Saucy Solutions team, enjoyed the chance to interact with students throughout the project. “We had a real problem, and we needed a real solution,” said Dietz. “We wanted these students to solve the problem, but I wanted to make it a truly educational experience for them as well. We talked a lot about how to meet a client’s needs, how to deal with the business world, even how to dress for interviews.”
Working side-by-side with clients gives students a chance to put theory to practice in the messy, complicated, often-frustrating world of a real business. That experience—the kind that you just can’t get in a classroom—was as valuable to students as the consulting project was to the company. “The project ended up being a lot more complex than I originally imagined,” said Melanie Wong. “One of the big challenges was learning to manage our clients and work within their expectations. We learned a lot just by working on the project.”
The Saucy Solutions students were honored as “Project of the Year” at the conference, but their real reward for all QUEST seniors is this semester-long introduction to the work world, and the invaluable head start it will give them in whatever careers they pursue.
2010 Consulting Project Clients
- Bowles Fluidics
- Force 3
- Integrity Consulting
- Lockheed Martin
- NIKA Architects + Engineers
- SAIC
- Tulkoff Food Products
- University of Baltimore
The 2010 QUEST Senior Conference was sponsored by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).
For more information about QUEST consulting projects, please contact Nicole Coomber.
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