Herman Miller Options Co-op II
Taylor
Experience Information
Employer: Herman Miller
Job Title: Options Engineer Co-op
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Herman Miller is a furniture company that places great importance on design. They design, manufacture, and sell furniture and related services and technologies for offices, schools, homes, and hospitals. The public and international company has over 7,000 employees worldwide.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
In Herman Miller Options Engineering Department, I would engineer a customer's special order that had some deviations from the standard office furniture product. I would choose which products I wanted and had the ability to complete and start researching the standard products and the changes that were quoted. Then, I would create the appropriate CAD parts and drawings that were needed. The bill of materials would be altered by creating new parts, adding existing parts, and/or removing parts in order to match the order. I would self check all of my work, then pass it onto another engineer to audit. My product would then be signed off and sent to the next step towards manufacturing.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
I gained a lot of Herman Miller product knowledge that would be useful in a possible future at Herman Miller as I would prefer. Also, I learned how to solve my own design issues as I was having and improved my technical communication.
Favorite Part of the Experience
I learned significant communication skills and different design problem solving. I contributed to our goal everyday and could actually see the support I made in the team. This semester helped round out my skills to become a more marketable engineer. The collaborative and open environment was very admirable along with the training that I have received.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
With my mentorship with a performance engineer, I had learned about the other positions that engineers have at Herman Miller and other companies. I enjoy the design problem solving in my day the most so that has given me insight that I would like to pursue a more research and design focused engineering.