An industrial engineering event built around a technical paper competition has expanded into a 4-day festival under the planning and direction of a committee of ISU students.

Iowa State is hosting the 2003 Institute of Industrial Engineers Student Regional Conference from Thursday evening through Sunday morning.

“These things have been getting bigger and bigger,” said Kira Hendricks, senior in industrial engineering and president of Iowa State’s student chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Conference coordinator Jeffrey Matthias, senior in industrial engineering, said this is one of the most elaborate conference schedules the annual conference has ever had.

He said the official reason for the conference is to hold the John Deere Institute of Industrial Engineers Technical Paper Competition Friday. A winner will be selected to advance to a national competition in Portland, Ore.

“We have 244 attendees registered,” Matthias said. This number is an increase from the 173 that attended last year’s conference in South Dakota.

Hendricks said one of the highlights of the conference will be visits to 10 different companies in central Iowa where participants will be able to tour plant facilities.

“The idea is to highlight manufacturing processes and new technology,” Hendricks said.

While the sites for the tours include companies like 3M and John Deere, which are often associated with industrial engineering, Matthias said the tours will examine overlooked plant facilities.

While several of Friday’s activities, including a Virtual Reality Applications Center demonstration in Howe Hall, will be held on the ISU campus, Matthias said the committee decided to hold most of the activities in Des Moines and transport attendees between the two sites.

Hendricks said 14 corporate sponsors contributed about $40,000 to put on the conference