Engineering Co-Op
Jackson
Experience Information
Employer: Oliver Healthcare Packaging
Job Title: Process Engineer
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Oliver Healthcare Packaging is a medical device packaging manufacturer in the Grand Rapids area. The company is relatively large, with multiple locations globally, although the engineering team specifically is relatively small.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
I worked primarily with the manufacturing and production of our products. My work mostly involved troubleshooting industrial machinery, improving and upgrading processes, and analyzing data.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
I learned a lot about how to apply engineering to the real world. Problems can come in all shapes and sizes, and being able to solve these problems is the main goal of engineering. Some specific things that I dealt with and learned about include industrial device communication and controls, mechanical design and power systems, and the application of statistical modeling to production environments.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of this experience was getting to work alongside full-time engineers and being able to learn from them. Overall this Co-Op experience allowed me to really grow and improve as an engineer in a professional setting.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
This experience has helped to open my eyes about manufacturing and production in general. Seeing how things can fail, and more importantly how to fix them when they do, really changed my perspective on how to design engineering systems.