From October 21 to 22, the national finals and award ceremony of the 2023 China College Students Industrial Engineering and Lean Management Innovation Competition was held at Tianjin University.

Undergraduate students from the Southern University of Science and Technology, Xiaoqi ZHU of Shude College and Changqing WANG of Shuren College, participated in the competition with their “Robust First Aid Responders” project.

They stood out among 409 projects to win the First Prize in the undergraduate category, marking the first time that students from SUSTech have won an award in this competition.

The team was guided by SUSTech Business School professor Yu (Rowan) WANG and DBA student Mr. Xingliang ZHANG.

Members of this project also include professors and students from SUSTech, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), Zhejiang University (ZJU), Changhai Affiliated Hospital to the Second Military Medical University, and Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT).

For emergency conditions such as sudden cardiac arrest, the SUSTech team designed and developed the app “Robust First Aid Responders”, which ensures that volunteers can arrive at the scene in a short time through positioning information and real-time matching algorithms.

The product also integrates information about nearby automated external defibrillator (AED) equipment, and will notify AED volunteers to pick up the AED equipment and rush to the scene.

When deploying first aid personnel, the system uses robust optimization information to form a diversified and differentiated first aid route to avoid any obstruction.

The application “Robust First Aid Responders” has been developed with the help of Shenzhen-based technology company Easy Connection, where Xingliang ZHANG serves as the CEO. In the future, the project will be implemented at SUSTech.

The China College Students Industrial Engineering and Lean Management Innovation Competition was jointly established by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES) and the Industrial Engineering Teaching Steering Committee of Higher Education Institutions of the Ministry of Education.

It strives to further promote the popularization and application of industrial engineering and lean management innovation methods and technologies, broaden the scientific and technological innovation vision of students, and build an exhibition and experience exchange platform of innovative achievements in industrial engineering and lean management for faculty members, students, and all sectors of society.

The competition has become a national excellence competition to promote the field of industrial engineering and lean management.

The event is held annually, and since its inception in 2018, it has been held six times. It has also been selected into the “National College Student Competition Catalog” issued by the China Association of Higher Education (CAHE).