This paper presents a case of an industry-partnership student research project at a teaching-intensive private university. The university partnered with a local electronics manufacturing company to define the research project. The research project was funded by a state-level agency. As a part of the funding requirement, students were supported during the project in terms of stipend and tuition, the industry partner and the university participated in cost-sharing and the students presented their results to the state sponsor and company periodically during the project lifetime. In this paper, we discuss the project scope which was to improve the manufacturing process at the electronics company for the assembly and packaging of printed circuit boards (PCBs). The project findings are presented in detail including designing and prototyping a key performance indicator-based (KPI) dashboard to predict and identify industry manufacturing limitations. We also report on the student learning experience, industry-academia collaboration for student projects, lessons learned, and several instructional insights concerning project management.
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