Controls Engineering Co-Op at Adient
Zachary
Experience Information
Employer: Adient
Job Title: Controls Co-Op
Major: Electrical Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Adient is one of the global leaders in automotive seating. Adient does work for a wide variety of vehicles, but the plant I worked at focused on Honda, Ram, Acura, and Toyota. Adient builds the whole frame of the seats including adding motors so the seats can move forward, backwards, up, and down. Adient has plants all over the world, such as Mexico, Germany, and Morocco. Adient resides in a total of 29 countries.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
For this semester of my Co-Op, I had several projects. All of these projects were related to PLCs and HMIs. Every PLC and HMI that I worked with was Allen Bradley. One biggest projects that I worked on was updating all of the PLCs to their latest version. This helped the plant be more standardized and allowed IT to support fewer firmware versions. I also got to create screens on HMIs so that operators and maintenance could print test labels out of printers. This was important to help troubleshoot problems with printers. Finally, I also got to write my ladder logic in the PLCs. For this project, I wrote code to send messages to the HMI to display the status of the cell.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
I gained lots of skills and knowledge throughout this experience. Coming into this Co-Op I had no experience with PLCs and HMIs, but throughout the semester, I learned so much about them. I learned how to write basic ladder logic and how to create screens on HMIs. I also learned how to make a PLC and HMI communicate with each other. Other skills that I learned was how to communicate with co-works as an engineer and how to problem solve as an engineer.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of my Co-Op experience was getting to work with HMIs and PLCs. I know I have brought up PLCs and HMIs a lot, but they are cool. Getting to design your screens on an HMI and then writing ladder logic to go with it feels so accomplished when it works. There are so many possibilities and I am excited to keep learning more about them.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
I think this experience has influenced my future career goals. Coming into this Co-Op I had no idea of what field of electrical engineering I wanted to go into, But I know now that Controls would be a field to consider. Also, I know that I would never be bored if I went into the Controls field.
Internship Format
In Person