Week 4 Parts 1 and 2

For my fourth week of my senior project I was continuing my time at the GM plant in Wentzville. I shadowed various types of engineers this week. I shadowed industrial engineers on Monday and learned how they manage different parts of the plant on an engineering perspective. I was with the stamping IE on Monday. Stamping is the department where they take sheets of metal and form them into the exterior shape of the vehicle. The plant had received new product for the stamping department and it is going to cost the plant more money because on the old system the doors came out vertically, however on the new product the doors come out flat and that is going to cost the plant an extra 1.5 million dollars in labor per year. That is one of the problems that the stamping industrial engineers will have to troubleshoot.

For two of my days this week I was with the controls engineers. The controls engineers are essentially the mechanics of the plant. If there is a problem with any of the robots they will be the people that run down to fix them. When I was with them it was not that busy of a day, which is good because that means the plant is running good. They ended up giving me a tour of the body shop. The GM plant in Wentzville is the only plant to have two body shops. The plant makes vans and trucks. The body shop is where they take all the stamped material and weld it together to form the fully constructed outer body to be sent off to the paint department.