Search - Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Blackmer Experience

Dustin
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering Writing assembly instructions, complete with pictures, for 29 compressor models that Blackmer offers.

Shape Corporation: Intern Experience

Chelsea
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering Two main projects were assigned to me this semester. One project being an optimization project, where I developed a methodology to minimize mass on a grill housing unit. The part is normally full of ribs, and the program used told us what ribs are necessary. The mass on the part can be greatly reduced while still staying within the stress constraints, displacement constraints, and frequency constraints. I created a document that takes a user step by step through the process and did many presentations to engineers involved with the part as well. The other main project worked on was simulating the forming process of the ends of an aluminum beam. The ends are "crushed" to fit into the design space, but this process leads to high-stress areas. I set up the simulation and post-processed the results. A few smaller projects were worked on as well. Another optimization project to find a light weight high strength beam and several small tasks to help with the work the rest of the CAE team does.

Vention Medical - 1st Term

Ryan
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering I worked mostly investigating and dealing with customer quality complaints, such as assemblies and devices not meeting specifications. Problems were investigated by thoroughly testing each part of the devices. Testing often involved having to design new and unique measurement methods and fixtures. Once the cause of the problems were found, I would help come up with solutions and have them implemented as soon as possible.

Magna Mirrors Engineering Co-op

Steven
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering During my first coop at Magna Mirrors I had the pleasure to design two pieces of testing machinery, learn different techniques of finite element analysis and visit General Motors and Chrysler. I had opportunities to immerse myself in a variety of designs, prototype builds and in the field mirror testing.

Working at GHSP has Been a Great Experience.

Hayden
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering This semester I was tasked with creating a system of visual scheduling for our electronics department. What my boss wanted me to create was a pull system closest to our customer. Currently, our planner schedules the week's products at the first work centers in the electronics area, the SMT's. The products are then arbitrarily forced through the other work centers based on what needs to be finished first. The electronics coordinators walk through the floor every morning and count the parts in progress to determine what we have and what still needs to be done. This leads to certain products sitting and waiting for long periods of time, parts getting misplaced, and inaccurate inventory counts. The pull system I have designed will utilize Kanban cards to move product through the various work centers. I calculated how often we can build the necessary products through the necessary work centers to meet our demand and based a supermarket for our finished goods off this interval. These supermarkets are designed to hold enough products to meet the average daily demand, to supply demand while the supermarkets are being replenished, and then a two day safety buffer. This buffer will slowly decrease as the system improves and there is less error. There is a similar supermarket setup inside the electronics department for the WIP. This is where the product is waiting to be used at some work center. There are two sets of cards that move with the products. One card follows the trays of WIP around the department, tracking its progress. The other set of cards follows the totes of finished goods from the last work center to the finished goods area. The finished goods cards are stored on a board denoting three separate areas. These areas are coded green, yellow, and red. While all of the slots are filled, the finished goods area for that product line is full. Every morning, a coordinator goes out and pulls the number of cards that meet that day's shipments and places them on the previous work centers build board. This signals them to start building certain products from their WIP area. As more cards are removed for shipments, the lower the supermarket gets, and the more into the red the finished goods cards go. This provides a visual way to see how much product is in the supermarket at any given time. As the work station consumes trays of WIP, they remove the WIP cards and place them onto another card board. This WIP card board has the same color coded slots. When a certain level is triggered, the cards are removed and placed at the SMT build board. This triggers the SMT's to start more products to replenish the WIP. The coordinators distribute the cards from this build board to the lines that are ready, or near ready to changeover to a new product. So far my system is only operating for three products from one work center. My boss wanted me to focus and start with these part numbers since they are some of the largest demanded products from our electronics department. There are a few more tweaks to this initial experiment that need to be made before it is rolled out to more work centers. I will continue to work on this part time throughout the summer.

First Co-op Semester at Faurecia

Amanda
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering While working at Faurecia xWorks in Holland I had the opportunity of working on components of major projects that were already in-progress. I also performed research for new projects and interests. During my semester I was also asked to execute tests of projects that were near completions.