News

Lee University alum Thomas Beil was recently awarded the 2021 Best Project for Innovation Award with Whirlpool for his Master of Business Administration (MBA) project.

Beil graduated from Lee in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He returned later and graduated in 2021 with his MBA. His project, The Bin Replenisher, began as an idea over lunch with Dr. Shane Griffith, professor of business and assistant vice president for enrollment at Lee. While completing his MBA at Lee, Beil also held a leadership position at Whirlpool, which provided an opportunity to integrate his academic work with his professional work.

“The Bin Replenisher was a culmination of a strong foundational education from Lee coupled with years of experience applying analytical models and concepts to automate insights and improve processes,” said Beil. “I am grateful to Lee University for the support and direction through the project and competition.”

Beil entered The Bin Replenisher into Whirlpool’s global project competition in November 2021. The Bin Replenisher is a real-time, automated warehouse management solution built to automate and error-proof processes within the warehouse, provide insights and analytics to the operators to efficiently direct their processes and eliminate human error, significantly reduce the training and onboarding time of new operators, and create high level analytics outputs for leadership oversight of performance and errors as well as audit activities.

“Thomas distinguished himself in the corporate world by developing new processes to accomplish complicated tasks efficiently,” said Dr. Dewayne Thompson, dean of the School of Business at Lee. “Thomas is the perfect combination of theory and experience that brings a fecundity to the classroom that assists students in understanding the application of theoretical concepts.”

Beil teaches Business Analytics at Lee’s School of Business to bring real-world application into the classroom.

“Analytics and technology are the future of business and knowing how to effectively utilize them is a force multiplier for career success,” said Beil. “Having the opportunity to give back to my alma mater by teaching Business Analytics has been rewarding. At Lee, we have the important mission of preparing Christ-centered, future leaders for their careers and setting them up for success!”