Outside of Class Engineering Analysis Semester 1
For the outside of class engineering I chose to interview Mr.
Marchewka, a Prototype Lab Manager at one of the International Rectifier
buildings in town. Besides interviewing him, he also took me on a tour of the
labs and offices of the smaller building of the company that specializes in New
Product Package Development. They create packaging for units of power sources
for circuits or mechanisms such as computers and other objects. Most of the
engineers who work in their specific building are electrical and packaging
engineers. Some of the things they do in the labs there are placing gold plating
over certain circuit parts and laying heavy aluminum wires. Mr. Marchewka is a
silicone engineer who has taken courses in business and marketing. After talking
to Mr. Marchewka about his lab he said that he was glad that the building was
older because some of the gases that they use are flammable to newer buildings.
A lot of the machines used in their lab are very high tech mixed with a few
older models that still work just as well. One machine packages a model of the
wafers in a type of plastic by pressing it together mechanically while in
another room an older version of the same machine would have to have been
manually pressed together by the worker.
From this interview and tour I had learned many things that may help me
later on in careers in engineering. One was that I should likely take a course
in college that involves business and marketing because of the ties between
career paths. Also social skills being taught in the class may help because I
was told that when talking to clients if you do not get along with or just anger
the client then the time working with them will not be as pleasant as it would
be if you were working together towards a common goal. Some interesting topics
that I learned in general about the International Rectifier business is that
they interact with many countries including Singapore, China, and the
Philippines. The engineers and product managers travel about once a year in
their specified region. Though I have decided I would like to travel more also
unlike the lab I visited I would like to work in a larger lab due to if a
certain design cannot be made in that lab they have to send the design off to
their machine office elsewhere. I learned that the skills we learn on Autodesk
will eventually pay off because the designers of the parts often use AutoCAD
even if it is only the 2D version instead of a 3D version we often
use.
Marchewka, a Prototype Lab Manager at one of the International Rectifier
buildings in town. Besides interviewing him, he also took me on a tour of the
labs and offices of the smaller building of the company that specializes in New
Product Package Development. They create packaging for units of power sources
for circuits or mechanisms such as computers and other objects. Most of the
engineers who work in their specific building are electrical and packaging
engineers. Some of the things they do in the labs there are placing gold plating
over certain circuit parts and laying heavy aluminum wires. Mr. Marchewka is a
silicone engineer who has taken courses in business and marketing. After talking
to Mr. Marchewka about his lab he said that he was glad that the building was
older because some of the gases that they use are flammable to newer buildings.
A lot of the machines used in their lab are very high tech mixed with a few
older models that still work just as well. One machine packages a model of the
wafers in a type of plastic by pressing it together mechanically while in
another room an older version of the same machine would have to have been
manually pressed together by the worker.
From this interview and tour I had learned many things that may help me
later on in careers in engineering. One was that I should likely take a course
in college that involves business and marketing because of the ties between
career paths. Also social skills being taught in the class may help because I
was told that when talking to clients if you do not get along with or just anger
the client then the time working with them will not be as pleasant as it would
be if you were working together towards a common goal. Some interesting topics
that I learned in general about the International Rectifier business is that
they interact with many countries including Singapore, China, and the
Philippines. The engineers and product managers travel about once a year in
their specified region. Though I have decided I would like to travel more also
unlike the lab I visited I would like to work in a larger lab due to if a
certain design cannot be made in that lab they have to send the design off to
their machine office elsewhere. I learned that the skills we learn on Autodesk
will eventually pay off because the designers of the parts often use AutoCAD
even if it is only the 2D version instead of a 3D version we often
use.