After graduating from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts in 2023, I was selected to intern at a top automotive manufacturing plant.
I was on the controls and the automation team, where I had the opportunity to operate among robots, PLCs and Festo systems on the factory floor. Until I started my internship, I did not realize that the Cyber-Physical manufacturing training system at my university is actually a smaller replica of what's happening right now in industry.
During my internship, I was also surprised by the sheer number of employees it took to run the plant. There were so many workers, and they are always hiring because they constantly need new talent to handle all of the automated systems.
The work culture is fast because today’s automotive industry is extremely competitive, especially when it comes to the evolving EV market. Automotive companies must automate as much as possible for maximum efficiency, speed and scalability. Industry 4.0 and the future workforce is what we are looking at. If anyone goes down to the factory floor to watch the production flow, you’ll see machines and humans working together in tandem. There’s hardly any manual work. They use semi-automated equipment to do the manual work and then some critical manual work is fully automated using robots.
New technologies are constantly coming. Therefore, continuous learning is the only way to keep upgrading ourselves in order to adapt. For example, everybody's using ChatGPT right now. It would have sounded crazy a couple of years back but now everybody is starting to get used to it. It’s the same way in advanced manufacturing - new systems are always coming out and everybody's feeling the pressure to upskill. For example, I've seen senior engineers taking up manuals and going through them and upgrading and updating themselves constantly.
So even if you're still in high school or college, keep improving yourself. Focus on what's available now, like learning PLCs, how to program robots, and taking courses like manufacturing systems. Those are the basics. Keep your base strong.
Many courses and quick workshops are now available online.
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