My Internship Experience at Gentex Corporation
Nicholas
Experience Information
Employer: Gentex Corporation
Job Title: Engineering Intern
Major: Computer Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Gentex Corporation's most important product is electro-chromatic interior and exterior mirrors for vehicles. These mirrors detect light and dim accordingly. They also design and produce airplane windows and and fire alarm systems. Gentex generally designs and produces all their products. The company is made up of regular production employees, managers, and engineers. Overall, there are about 4000 employees that work at Gentex.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
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.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
At Gentex I learned how the production process works. I learned a lot about how production problems can influence the finances and costs in a company. In the tester group, I was able to learn to crimp, solder and assemble wiring in many of the machines. I learned how to solve problems using TPS (Toyota Production System - a way of documenting, solving, and presenting problems). I also learned to use many different software programs used in production. These included programs that calculate scrap costs, create flow schedules, and submit quality concerns with circuit boards. I was able to learn how to use Microsoft databases to access and manipulate data. Finally, I learned a lot about time management (because I had to work on several projects at once), and how to interact with other employees and managers.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of this experience was the amount of responsibility and flexibility I had in solving problems on the production floor. I enjoyed working in teams with other interns to solve problems. I was able to apply many of my technical skills (especially in statistics and computer programming) to real-world problems.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
This experience taught me that I really enjoy the engineering role, and it solidifies my right choice of major. I enjoyed Gentex as a company, and if possible, I would enjoy working for them in the future for my career as an engineer. As an engineering major, this gave me quite a bit of experience working in production, solving production problems, and working in teams. Hopefully, this experience will prepare me for other engineering roles, either at Gentex, or another company.