Steelcase - Engineering Co-op Rotation 01
Zachary
Experience Information
Employer: Steelcase Inc.
Job Title: Manufacturing Engineer
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Steelcase offers a comprehensive portfolio of architecture, furniture, technology products, and services designed to unlock human promise and support social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Steelcase is an international corporation and, for engineers in particular, have positions ranging from the initial design of products to positions that sustain existing production lines in the plants.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
Working with the manufacturing engineers at the Steelcase Kentwood plant, my projects ranged from helping implement new products into the plant to doing projects that helped support existing product lines. A good portion of my work was designing racks/fixtures on AutoCAD. These projects included speaking to the operators to get suggestions, working with suppliers to get the fixtures built, and getting the fixtures calibrated to ensure that they would keep parts within tolerance. In addition to that, I helped support other engineers with various other projects which exposed me to the different roles within the department. These projects included laying out production lines, compiling data to justify projects, studying processes and suggesting changes to make the processes more efficient.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
This experience expanded my experience with AutoCAD and SAP, taught me to be thorough when understanding a problem to ensure to reach the best possible solution, and gave me a better understanding of different manufacturing processes. More importantly, though, this experience gave me the opportunity to know what it means to be an engineer in the workplace and reinforced my resolve to get my degree.
Favorite Part of the Experience
The thing that I appreciated most about Steelcase was the fact that they seemed genuine in ensuring I got the experience I needed. I was not given unrelated "intern" work, but everything I did during this rotation was the same thing that other engineers were doing. I was not thrown into the deep end when I arrived but was also not held back as I progressed. Additionally, being a large corporation, I have been offered the opportunity to try other engineering roles within the corporation as well as gain additional experience by working at one of their other plants.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
Working at Steelcase reassured myself that engineering is what I want to do in the future as well as showed me the benefits of working for a large organization.