Emma C.
University of Michigan | College of Engineering | Class of 2022
For the past ten weeks, I worked as an intern at Airtech Vacuum USA. I was a rising sophomore when I started this position and am ending it as a more capable employee and student.
As my area of study at school is operations engineering, I mainly worked with the quality engineers at the company. They monitor every aspect of company activity and continuously improving processes to ensure their products are of the highest quality. I created expiration date labels for hundreds of shelf-life supplies and calibrated tools on the production floor to make sure each product was put together using the best materials. Editing and reformatting work instruction forms, making foam-organized drawers and building calibration equipment for a wire puller are just a few more things I did to improve the processes at Airtech. My favorite part, however, was truly learning how a great company runs. I was lucky enough to have been here while a customer-led audit was taking place, and through this, my eyes were opened to the complexities of seemingly standard procedures. I saw the amount of people involved in perfecting a single product and how all of them held their work to such an incredibly high standard. This experience taught me not only how to introduce a process, but also how to go about improving that process.
I expected to learn a lot this summer and get real-life experience as a working engineer, but little did I know how much I would change as a result of this internship. A lot of responsibility was placed on me and I challenged myself to go above and beyond with the tasks given to me. My ability to solve problems, communicate and think creatively most definitely improved thanks to this internship. I am now confident in my ability to analyze the way a company runs and help it work more efficiently, as well as develop solutions to problems as they arise.
I am so thankful for this opportunity and for my experience at Airtech and am excited to utilize these skills in my future endeavors.