Electrical Controls Systems in Manufacturing
Nigel
Experience Information
Employer: General Motors
Job Title: Electrical Controls Systems Engineering Co-op Student - Current Products
Major: Electrical Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
General Motors is amongst the largest automotive OEMs in the world, and is the parent company to car brands Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and a few other European brands. The company is quite structured and it is rare for people to work outside of their job description as there are over 180,000 employees.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
I was responsible for keeping wiring diagram drawings up to date with the machines that were on the manufacturing floor. In addition, I did programming and debugging for multiple Allen Bradley PLCs and an HMI (Human-Machine Interface).
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
I am now competent with AutoCAD Electrical for making wiring diagram drawings for PLCs as well as very capable at debugging and programming PLCs via RSLogix5000.
Favorite Part of the Experience
Launching and debugging a can packing table from essentially start to finish was my favorite experience from this co-op rotation because it was seeing the software interact with the hardware and making live changes to ensure the machine worked as intended.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
It has shown me more insight into the advantages and disadvantages of working at different sizes of organizations. A small company may have a lot more hands-on work, doing the tests and design all by one's self, whereas a large company will be more hands-off and engineers may only do design or testing, not both.