Manufacturing Operations Intern
- Information about the organization (e.g., type, size, location, specific division/department in which you are employed)
- Brightsmith Coaters is a manufacturing company which specializes in metal coil coating and slitting. The company has about 40 employees and has customers located all over the country. Its sister company, ATAS, specializes in manufacturing metal roofing and metal wall panels. Many of Brightsmith’s customers, such as Wilbar, produce pools. I worked at Brightsmith’s main location in Morrisville, PA. There is also a Trenton, NJ location which specializes in Post-Painting. I worked with every department of the Morrisville location of the organization due to the nature of the work, however I worked closest with the Assistant General Manager.
- Job function (e.g., overall role, assigned tasks)
- At Brightsmith, I was tasked to learn their business process and improve it. I was hired to develop a new and improved version of their old Quality Management System. Quality Management is integral in the Manufacturing Industry in order to achieve ISO 9000 Certification. In order to carry out this task, I was required to interview and observe each and every employee, both in the office and on the manufacturing line, to understand how they interacted with both the Quality Mangement System and Brightsmith’s ERP System.
- Examples of projects (e.g., list the projects you worked on and what you accomplished)
- First, I was required to develop a layout for the new QMS. I had decided that the most efficient way to store the new procedures and work instructions was to store them locally on a shared drive. This way every employee had easy access to the work instructions from their desktops. Many of Brightsmith’s employees are technologically adverse so a complicated system would defeat the purpose of improving the quality system. Next, I had to develop Standard Operating Procedures and Work Instructions for each task in both the office and manufacturing line. I converted some of the old Work Instructions from PDF files and converted them to Microsoft Office Files to edit and revamp. Many processes were required to be started from scratch. Next, I conducted a series of interviews and observations with each employee in every department to understand how everyone in the organization interacts and carries out their daily jobs. I had interviewed Customer Service, Sales, Purchasing, Scheduling, Shipping and Receiving (Procurement), Environmental, Management, Safety, Maintenance, and Production.
- What you learned and how it relates to your major (e.g., describe what you learned from this internship in the context of specific courses).
- At my internship at Brightsmith, I have learned how an organization realizes its products from taking and receiving an order all the way through production to fulfillment. Here I was given the opportunity to get a glimpse at an entire organization\’s business process and how it works. This directly ties into many parts of previous MIS classes. I utilized skills obtained from MIS classes to create process flowcharts and create an efficient layout for the Quality Management System. In the IT field it is vital to understand how different sections of business interact and communicate. My internship with Brightsmith is a very valuable addition to my resume and has been an extremely special learning experience.