Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Configura: The Best Co-op for Programmers

Colin
Major: Computer Engineering I was given 4 tasks, and at the time of me writing this, I completed two and almost finished the third. I will still be working on it and hopefully my final assignment until the Fall semester starts. My first assignment after some initial training was to create a revision dialog. My second assignment was to improve an existing feature that allows for users to place their own images on walls. My third assignment was to create a label that will automatically increment when placed in a drawing.

DornerWorks Software Intern

David
Major: Computer Engineering I was able to work on a few internal projects for DornerWorks. Some booster packs for development boards were created by other interns, and I was able to write/modify software libraries and demo programs for them. As the internship progressed and we started using new components, I was able to make some libraries from scratch and implement them on the booster packs.

Medallion - Computer Engineering Co-op 1

Jacob
Major: Computer Engineering The team at Medallion was working all summer to complete software and hardware development on a new touchscreen interface for Malibu boats. Working in the software department, I wrote software verification tests to help find bugs and performance issues. Both the software and firmware needed to be updated and tested on a regular basis. My programming assignments were to write and improve applications for simulating controller units. Despite working primarily with software, my tasks involved plenty of hands-on work with the hardware systems.

JR Automation Co-op

Nathan
Major: Computer Engineering I worked on a number of different jobs. I set up and updated electrical prints and did the same to their corresponding bill of materials. I also did do some work with plc programming. I did some work testing vision sensors as well.

Software Engineering at Dematic Corp.

Adam
Major: Computer Engineering I worked in the software R&D department in which my tasks generally consisted of developing new software for use in customer sites. During my first and second co-op rotations I worked on the same project, a large software suite consisting of multiple subsystems that were integrated into a larger product, targeted at intelligent management of a distribution center. This incorporated managing the flow of product through the system as well as providing information about how the product was moving through the system.

Software Engineering at Dematic

Adam
Major: Computer Engineering At Dematic I worked in the software research and development department where we worked on a software suite that provides the high-level control over our physical systems installed at our job sites (usually distribution centers/automated warehouses). Basically this means that in the order fulfillment process, the customer's system downloads orders to ours and our system then handles fulfilling those orders by optimizing the process of people picking the items in those orders, packing them and shipping them. In our department there are several teams focusing on different portions of the software suite, mine being the system integration team. We focus on providing and maintaining both the framework with which we write our system level tests and the system level tests themselves. The other teams in the department are individually responsible for writing the applications themselves, unit tests (tests that probe segments of an application) and module level tests (tests that require a running version of that application but do not require the presence of other applications). Throughout this semester, I worked with my team on writing system level tests, working through bugs uncovered by these tests with our other teams, and developing a better framework within which we write our system level tests.

First Semester Co-op at Medallion Instrumentation Systems

Gregory
Major: Computer Engineering During my first semester at Medallion, I completed a mixture of tasks relating to both software and hardware challenges. One software task was to create, maintain, and produce updates for a program that accesses and retrieves information from several of Medallion's databases. On the hardware side of things, I got to troubleshoot problems in circuits, design my own circuits, and run validation tests on several of Medallion's products.

My Internship Experience at Gentex Corporation

Nicholas
Major: Computer Engineering At Gentex, I spent a lot of time on the production floor. My main projects involved working on production efficiency. I did time studies of production processes and downtime to determine what could be changed. To reduce downtime, I worked with product schedulers to come up with better schedules that would reduce the number of necessary changeovers when switching products. I also worked with the tester group in the electronics department. I did a lot of hands on work wiring and rebuilding mirror testers, glare testers, and combo testers (circuit board testers). Finally, I was able to design a computer program that kept track of electronic parts in their inventory.