June 10, 2026• FAME USA

FAME Student Cuts Three-Hour Process Down to 30 Minutes 

2026-05-12 FAME National Conference 2026-05-12 FAME National Conference in Jacksonville, USA on May 13, 2026.
Triangle@2x

Xavier Bethea solved a problem at Toyota Research & Development so well that his solution was shared across the Atlantic. The second-year Michigan FAME Mitten Chapter student took home the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Manufacturing Core Exercise competition for an app that slashed vehicle performance reporting time by 83%. 

Xavier Bethea presents his winning Manufacturing Core Exercise project at the FAME National Conference.

The project: Evaluation teams at Toyota Research and Development regularly assess driver assistance systems. However, sifting through GPS data, camera footage and written data made compiling one report time-consuming and tedious. 

  • Bethea built a web app that synced the three data sets onto one screen, automating the organization process that was previously done manually.  
  • His app reduced evaluation time from three-hours to just 30 minutes. This saves evaluation engineers 25 hours per year, freeing employees to focus on higher-value work. 
  • The tool was shared with colleagues at Toyota Motor Europe, spreading the impact of Bethea’s project internationally. 

We have a winner: This was one of three second-year projects selected from across the FAME USA network to compete at the FAME National Conference’s student MCE Competition. In the final session, Bethea was picked by the audience to receive the People’s Choice Award. 

The power of MCEs: MCEs are a core component of FAME’s curriculum, designed to overcome common shortcomings in technical education. Every year, students identify, implement and present innovative solutions to MCE-related challenges in their actual workplaces. 

  • The five MCEs are safety culture, visual workplace organization, lean manufacturing, problem solving and machine reliability. 

Delivering impact: Across the FAME network, students like Bethea are walking into some of America’s most advanced facilities and making them work better. The next generation of manufacturers isn’t waiting to be handed a problem. With FAME, they’re already solving them.

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