This paper presents a year-long, industry-engaged senior design project conducted within the Industrial Engineering Technology program at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, focused on solving a real-world facility layout problem for a local original equipment manufacturer (OEM). The partner company operates under a make-to-order production environment and experienced significant inefficiencies due to an ad-hoc facility layout characterized by overlapping machine assignments, excessive material handling, and frequent cross-traffic. To address these challenges, a student team applied systematic facility layout planning supported by quantitative, data-driven analysis. The methodology involved mapping the existing shop-floor layout, developing from–to charts based on product routing frequencies, and calculating total material travel distances as the primary performance metric. Multiple alternative layout configurations were generated and evaluated using an objective function that minimized weighted travel distance while accounting for spatial, safety, and operational constraints. The selected layout realigned workstations to better follow dominant process flows and reduce backtracking. Results show that the proposed layout achieved an estimated 18.9% reduction in total material handling distance, decreasing travel from approximately 7,699 feet to 6,243 feet, while also reducing cross-traffic and congestion. Beyond operational improvements, the project demonstrates the educational value of a year-long, industry-collaborative capstone experience. Students gained hands-on exposure to facility planning, operations analysis, and professional problem-solving within real industrial constraints. The study highlights a scalable framework for integrating applied facility layout optimization into engineering technology curricula and illustrates how academic–industry partnerships can deliver tangible benefits to both students and manufacturing organizations.