About
Starting Semester: Fall 2026Assigned: No
Location: Atlanta
Coca-Cola
Client Profile
Coca-Cola Atlanta Syrup Plant (ASP)The Atlanta Syrup Plant is a manufacturing and distribution operation supporting The Coca-Cola system through the production, packaging, warehousing, and distribution of beverage syrup products. The site operates through an integrated organization focused on Safety, Quality, Service, Cost, People, and Continuous Improvement.
Primary Operations
Bag-in-Box (BIB) Production — 4 production lines
75G Operations — 1 line
Freestyle Production — 2 production lines
Warehouse & Material Handling
Maintenance & Reliability
Quality & Food Safety
Facilities & Utilities
Operational Excellence
Finance
Safety/Environmental
Site Leadership
Project Description
The Warehouse Traffic Optimization Project will evaluate and improve the movement of forklifts, pedestrians, materials, finished goods, and inbound/outbound traffic throughout the Atlanta Syrup Plant warehouse. The project will identify congestion points, unnecessary travel, traffic conflicts, and inefficient material-flow patterns that impact safety, productivity, and overall warehouse performance.Using traffic-flow observations, material movement data, spaghetti mapping, and process analysis, the team will develop an optimized future-state traffic plan that improves routing, establishes clearly defined travel paths, reduces forklift and pedestrian interaction, and minimizes non-value-added movement.
The project will focus on creating a safer and more efficient warehouse environment while supporting production requirements and future site growth.
Primary objectives include:
Reduce forklift travel distance and unnecessary material movement.
Minimize congestion and traffic bottlenecks.
Improve separation between pedestrian and powered industrial truck traffic.
Improve material flow between receiving, storage, production, staging, and shipping.
Establish standardized traffic routes and directional flow where practical.
Improve staging and storage utilization to prevent aisles and travel paths from becoming obstructed.
Reduce transportation-related delays to production and warehouse operations.
Improve dock, trailer, and shipping/receiving traffic flow.
Establish a sustainable future-state layout that supports changing production volumes and site growth.
Expected Result: A standardized warehouse traffic and material-flow strategy that improves Safety, Service, Productivity, and Cost by reducing risk, travel time, congestion, and non-value-added movement throughout the facility.
Skills
Skill / Knowledge How It Supports the ProjectIndustrial/Systems Engineering Analyze warehouse layout, flow, capacity, and interactions between processes.
Lean Manufacturing/Identify waste such as transportation, motion, waiting, excess handling, and poor flow.
Process Mapping / Value Stream Mapping Document current-state and future-state warehouse processes.
Data Analytics/Analyze forklift movements, travel times, volumes, congestion, utilization, and delays.
Excel / Power BI/ Organize data, identify trends, and develop visual dashboards or project results.
Facility Layout & Optimization/ Evaluate aisle configurations, staging areas, storage locations, docks, and traffic patterns.
Time & Motion Studies Measure travel distances, cycle times, waiting, and non-value-added movement.
Spaghetti Diagramming/ Visually capture forklift, pedestrian, and material movement to identify excessive travel and crossing points.
Safety / Ergonomics Awareness Evaluate forklift-pedestrian interactions, blind spots, intersections, and other traffic risks.
Simulation / Modeling Model alternative traffic patterns or layouts before physical changes are made.
AutoCAD / Visio / Similar Tools Develop professional current-state and proposed future-state warehouse layouts.
Problem Solving / Root Cause Analysis/ Move beyond symptoms and determine why congestion, delays, and inefficient movement occur.
Project Management Manage milestones, deliverables, data collection, stakeholder meetings, and final recommendations.
Communication & Presentation Interview operators and leaders and present recommendations to plant leadership.
Team Collaboration/ Work effectively with Warehouse, Production, Safety, Maintenance, Facilities, and OPEX.
SAP 4.0 / SAP Warehouse Processes Ability to understand inventory movements, material locations, receipts, transfers, staging, production supply, and shipping transactions to identify where and why material is moving.
Crown InfoLink / Fleet Management Systems/ Ability to analyze powered industrial truck utilization, travel/activity patterns, impacts, idle time, operator/equipment activity, and other available fleet data to support traffic optimization.