2nd Co-op Rotation at Gill Industries
Leif
Experience Information
Employer: Gill Industries
Job Title: Engineering Co-op
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Gill Industries began as a family-owned and operated tool and die shop but has grown to become a global operation with facilities in several countries. Today, the company is still a private family-owned business and has over 2000 employees worldwide. Gill Industries is corporately located in Grand Rapids which is also home to three of its manufacturing plants. Gill specializes in stamping and value-added assembly for the automotive, furniture, and utility vehicle industries.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
This semester, I split my time between process engineering at a plant level and product engineering at a corporate level. In process engineering I worked closely with operators and team leaders on the production floor to monitor and improve line efficiency in several ways. Some of the smaller projects I completed include updating operator work instructions, modeling small fixture parts from drawings, and maintaining a daily throughput line chart that reported efficiency of one of Gill's larger volume lines. I also completed several larger projects like doing a time study on one of Gill's larger volume lines and completing an engineering time breakdown of every operation in the line, finding inefficiencies, and suggesting steps to improve the line. Another large project was measuring a feature on a welded subassembly to complete a study seeing if there was a correlation between weld fixture, stamping, and gap dimension. By far, my largest project while in process engineering was designing, ordering components for, and fabricating a flow rack for a line in order to potentially increase efficiency. The second half of this semester, I spent my time with the corporate product engineering team. Some of my miscellaneous tasks in this department included testing and measuring parts for quality concerns and benchmarking, comparing different revision levels of drawings, and gauging parts to see if they matched coordinate measuring machine (CMM) data. Most of my time in this department was spent preparing to take over the work of a project engineer that went on maternity leave at the beginning of April. This included attending all of her meetings with her in order to gather all of the information I would need to be self-sufficient throughout the product launch. My involvement in the launch included traveling to machine builders to oversee trial parts, speak with engineers from the customer, and do light rework on some parts. My experience in this stage of my co-op allowed me to step right into a full product engineering role and test my professional abilities.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
During my time at Gill, I learned several valuable skills critical to the engineering process. On the plant level, I learned how to conduct time studies in order to identify inefficiencies in processes and methods to improve them. I also experienced a more typical day in the life of a product engineer during a product launch. This involved updating CAD drawings so that they were consistent with the data provided by the customer and attending meetings with the customer to discuss design changes.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of the co-op experience was getting to assume the role of a professional engineer. With increased responsibility, I enjoyed the challenge of undertaking the work of a full-time product engineer.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
This experience has affirmed my choice to study product design and manufacturing engineering. Being exposed to different engineering departments throughout the summer, my favorite to work in was the product engineering department. On the other hand, my time in the process engineering department made me realize that I enjoy continuous improvement. My experiences may cause me to find a position that uses both sets of skills.