Herman Miller Co-op 3
Chase
Experience Information
Employer: Herman Miller
Job Title: Manufacturing/Operations Engineer Co-op
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Herman Miller is a globally recognized provider of furnishings and related technologies and services. Headquartered in West Michigan, the global company has relied on innovative design for over 100 years to solve problems for people wherever they work, live, learn, and heal. Herman Miller's designs are part of museum collections worldwide, and the company is a past recipient of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. Known and respected for its leadership in corporate social responsibility, Herman Miller has been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the past 12 years, and has earned the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's top rating in its Corporate Equality Index for the past nine years. In fiscal 2016, the company generated $2.26 billion in revenue and employed nearly 8,000 people worldwide. Herman Miller trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol MLHR.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
This rotation, I was placed into more of a quality engineer role in an area of the company that packages the tabletops that we manufacture. My largest project this semester was to make an impact in the quality issues we had in fiscal year 20. In order to do this, I was placed on a blitz team that added multiple quality verification steps to the operator's jobs on the packaging line. Designing these checks in a way that makes them efficient was one of the early tasks of mine. Through data collection, it was concluded that almost 20% of our quality issues came from a singular supplied hardware box that we pair with our tables and ship to the customer. On top of the checks implemented on the line, I've been designing a process to "poka-yoke," or "error-proof" the way we package and ship these boxes.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
Throughout this experience, I have really learned how to break down problems into smaller pieces and target the pieces that give you the best bang for your buck. This has taught me the importance of accurate data, and has given me skills in meaningful data interpretation once you acquire it.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of this co-op experience was getting to own my own projects and the ability to influence the outcomes in a tangible way. I also really enjoyed the people I worked with everyday.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
This experience has influenced my future career goals by giving my a greater appreciation for manufacturing. Even if I don't end up in manufacturing, I think that all engineers that work with products of any kind will benefit from learning the difficulties of manufacturing those products on a mass scale.