Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Super Extravagant Co-Op

Joseph
Major: Mechanical Engineering Some of my responsibilities are benchmarking new outside mirrors that are entering the market on vehicles that are on the road, and 3D printing prototypes or parts for miscellaneous projects and innovations that are being done. I have been working on an advanced technology project for GM that is in very early stages. This has involved benchmarking, creating CAD designs, and decisions matrices for several mechanisms. I am also working on a lot of studies with our inside mirrors that have been on going for a couple months. Testing done for ground illuminators and many other tests that were needed.

GMCH 1st Semester Co-op

Alex
Major: Mechanical Engineering The first two weeks I was just getting familiar with the plant and processes. The manufacturing floor is split up into north and south, so I spent time with both teams. During this time I did some part gauging, tried learning how to run all the machines, and did a bit of "grunt" work. The next few weeks I spent working with the advanced team. During this time I was assigned to an engineer and it was to him that I reported. My engineer have me a project where I was to develop some new parts for use in engine installation. Here develop means design, get parts built, and test parts according to a test procedure that I wrote. As of writing there is still a little work to be done on this project. I also did some benchmarking against competitors' parts and am planning on doing some tension testing to help one of the engineers refine the FEA simulation that he designed. Now I am working with the current manufacturing team. My duties include helping with machine qualifications, R&R's, and learning what goes into getting a new product line ready for production. Overall there will be a slow day here and there where you end up waiting on someone but usually there's quite a bit that needs doing. If you ever need something to do, ask.

EGR 290 Co-op Experience

Andrew
Major: Mechanical Engineering I have been exposed to many different projects as an intern. Most of my time is spent detailing drawings, updating drawings, and occasionally small design projects. Therefore, almost daily, I am moving around to help different engineers with a variety of tasks. I was also tasked to decrease the overall price of a custom design smoker/grill with the help of several other interns. We were able to decrease the price by about 50% and there is now a good chance the smoker will actually be produced and used at the business unit I worked in.

Driven to make Healthcare Better

Allison
Major: Computer Engineering I worked as an intern in Advanced Quality Engineering for this co-op. I supported two different teams in reviewing, executing, and correcting software scripts. For one team, I received official training to execute the scripts in test lab and sign my name off on everything. I also worked on two other projects independently. I designed an excel macro/app for my mentor, which automatically sorts through thousands of lines of complaint data he previously had to manually organize for days. This will aid him in completing Risk Management Forms, which is a common process for AQEs. My program will be used by multiple engineers. I also did some work with an engineer involved in the design of surgical power tools. Stryker receives runtime data during surgery for every drill currently out in the field. I organized and performed statistical analysis on the data, and gave him an estimate of life-use, and single-use metrics for the tools. He could then use this information to communicate to customers on how to use the tools properly.

First Engineering Co-Op

Gunnar
Major: Mechanical Engineering Jr allowed me to experience a wide range of tasks, mainly detailing projects (placing dimensions on 2D prints), checking other designers work, and updating drawings to how a machine was actually built. I also got to get out on the build floor and experience some of the actual building of the machines.

UCC Summer Co-op Experience

Nick
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering As a project engineer co-op I was given a wide variety of tasks. Some small projects include pellet limiting plates for the classifiers, strand separating fingers, and a light diffusion tester. With these small projects I was involved in the sourcing of materials as well as building the final products. Some larger projects I was involved in were the design of the dosing station for the new Georgia plant, the redesign of two extrusion set-ups to accommodate multiple feeders, and the redesign of the existing packaging line at UCC. For large scale projects, I was assigned specifically to making CAD drawings using either Solidworks or AutoCad.

Summer 2015 Engineering Co-op #1

Drew
Major: Electrical Engineering electrical drawing changes, setting up PCs, setting up and wiring CNCs, backing up PCs, printing manuals, and assembling vendor manuals to name a few.

Enjoyable Design Work

Ben
Major: Mechanical Engineering Right from the beginning, I was introduced to the full design process, being tasked with designing a specialized part rack to challenging specifications. Throughout the semester, I performed much of the same kind of work done by my superiors: designing different stations for an automated headliner assembly line, re-designing portions of existing machines to accept new parts, and coming up with solutions for problems encountered in the assembly phase of several machines. Only a small portion of my time was spent on more "traditional" intern work, like creating standardized part models and updating old documentation, and such work was only assigned when there weren't more in-depth projects available.

Autocam Co-op

Alissa
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering I focused on continuous improvement throughout the semester. I completed a damage study to reduce scrap rates. From this, re-designs of trays and fixtures were made to make the process more efficient. These re-designs required reprogramming of robots and troubleshooting. I also created a design of a tray cover to implement in order to keep parts from coming out of the tray while they go through a chemical wash.

Zoo Internship

Faye
Major: Biology While working at the zoo I helped keepers do daily observations, feed and medicate the animals, provide behavioral enrichment, and clean the exhibits and night houses each day. I also helped with observations with the introduction of the baby Andean bear to his outdoor exhibit. Keepers would also utilize my help by having me complete some of their tasks if they were running behind for the day.

The best company to work for!

Kyle
Major: Computer Engineering I wrote documentation for a software tool that my team was working on developing and releasing. I worked in Visual Basic Excel to create a few tools for senior level engineers. I wrote code in C# for a metrics dashboard. I worked in a Gypsum mine cataloging data that we have stored there.

My Internship Experience at Gentex Corporation

Nicholas
Major: Computer Engineering At Gentex, I spent a lot of time on the production floor. My main projects involved working on production efficiency. I did time studies of production processes and downtime to determine what could be changed. To reduce downtime, I worked with product schedulers to come up with better schedules that would reduce the number of necessary changeovers when switching products. I also worked with the tester group in the electronics department. I did a lot of hands on work wiring and rebuilding mirror testers, glare testers, and combo testers (circuit board testers). Finally, I was able to design a computer program that kept track of electronic parts in their inventory.

First Semester Co-op at Medallion Instrumentation Systems

Gregory
Major: Computer Engineering During my first semester at Medallion, I completed a mixture of tasks relating to both software and hardware challenges. One software task was to create, maintain, and produce updates for a program that accesses and retrieves information from several of Medallion's databases. On the hardware side of things, I got to troubleshoot problems in circuits, design my own circuits, and run validation tests on several of Medallion's products.

Software Engineering at Dematic

Adam
Major: Computer Engineering At Dematic I worked in the software research and development department where we worked on a software suite that provides the high-level control over our physical systems installed at our job sites (usually distribution centers/automated warehouses). Basically this means that in the order fulfillment process, the customer's system downloads orders to ours and our system then handles fulfilling those orders by optimizing the process of people picking the items in those orders, packing them and shipping them. In our department there are several teams focusing on different portions of the software suite, mine being the system integration team. We focus on providing and maintaining both the framework with which we write our system level tests and the system level tests themselves. The other teams in the department are individually responsible for writing the applications themselves, unit tests (tests that probe segments of an application) and module level tests (tests that require a running version of that application but do not require the presence of other applications). Throughout this semester, I worked with my team on writing system level tests, working through bugs uncovered by these tests with our other teams, and developing a better framework within which we write our system level tests.

Software Engineering at Dematic Corp.

Adam
Major: Computer Engineering I worked in the software R&D department in which my tasks generally consisted of developing new software for use in customer sites. During my first and second co-op rotations I worked on the same project, a large software suite consisting of multiple subsystems that were integrated into a larger product, targeted at intelligent management of a distribution center. This incorporated managing the flow of product through the system as well as providing information about how the product was moving through the system.

JR Automation Co-op

Nathan
Major: Computer Engineering I worked on a number of different jobs. I set up and updated electrical prints and did the same to their corresponding bill of materials. I also did do some work with plc programming. I did some work testing vision sensors as well.

Medallion - Computer Engineering Co-op 1

Jacob
Major: Computer Engineering The team at Medallion was working all summer to complete software and hardware development on a new touchscreen interface for Malibu boats. Working in the software department, I wrote software verification tests to help find bugs and performance issues. Both the software and firmware needed to be updated and tested on a regular basis. My programming assignments were to write and improve applications for simulating controller units. Despite working primarily with software, my tasks involved plenty of hands-on work with the hardware systems.

DornerWorks Software Intern

David
Major: Computer Engineering I was able to work on a few internal projects for DornerWorks. Some booster packs for development boards were created by other interns, and I was able to write/modify software libraries and demo programs for them. As the internship progressed and we started using new components, I was able to make some libraries from scratch and implement them on the booster packs.

Configura: The Best Co-op for Programmers

Colin
Major: Computer Engineering I was given 4 tasks, and at the time of me writing this, I completed two and almost finished the third. I will still be working on it and hopefully my final assignment until the Fall semester starts. My first assignment after some initial training was to create a revision dialog. My second assignment was to improve an existing feature that allows for users to place their own images on walls. My third assignment was to create a label that will automatically increment when placed in a drawing.

Imagination at Work

Abigail
Major: Computer Engineering While at GE Aviation I completed support role type tasks. This included document review, Requirements capturing and review, and Interface Control Document design and error clean-up. Requirements are rules set out for the specific system that you are working on. Interface Control Documents are a combination of text, tables and XML sheets that define the interfaces between systems.

Second Co-op at DornerWorks

Nicholas
Major: Computer Engineering During my semester I did a lot of testing different hardware. I also did research and testing involving wireless power transfer. Other work I did includes part generation using MentorGraphics PADS PCB development software. Schematic design and layout in PADS. Front end software development of internal tools. Platform support for the SEL4 open source microkernel.

EGR 390 Co-op Semester

Kalee
Major: Computer Engineering I was able to work with more of our customers this semester besides GM, including Chrysler, Ford, Tesla, and other car plants where our machines are used. I helped customers directly diagnose and fix software problems, as well as helped our field service personnel from our company fix software issues for the customer. I worked with them either over the phone or through email, and I even worked with personnel from our field service offices in other countries. I was able to do a lot of my projects independently this semester with my boss or my coworkers in my software group checking my work when I was finished instead of helping me throughout the process. I also wrote a new test to perform on the cars that didn't previously exist.

Embedded Systems at DornerWorks

David
Major: Computer Engineering I developed R&D applications for Bluetooth, ran tests on an automated grill and gave feedback on its characteristics, test-drove a new auto-testing platform, and did some research into confidential classifications.

Working IT for JCI

Carlos
Major: Computer Engineering I was assigned three projects during this co-op experience. The first project entailed migrating our production scheduling system from a front-end/back-end Access database application to a front-end Access and back-end SQL Server database. The second project entailed follow-up meetings with all our interiors plants in North America where an IT Infrastructure Analysis was performed during my previous co-op at JCI. The last project involved documenting WEBHMI screens used at our interiors and seating plants, which report data from our PLCs; things such as throughput, customer broadcast information, downtime related events, etc.

Performance Software Spring 2015 CE Co-op

Jacob
Major: Computer Engineering I am working on a project with a large team of people from both Performance Software and GE Aviation. My team is responsible for validation and verification of the aircraft health monitoring system. The project utilizes agile software development because the software being tested is still under development. An application interface written in Java is used to prepare automated test scripts.