How participating in a Winter Term workshop led to a successful internship this summer
Lauren Devney, a senior Mechanical Engineering Major, shares her experience of her summer internship with Greif.
How participating in a Winter Term workshop led to a successful internship this summer
Last winter, I was a part of the Maintenance and Reliability Internship (MARI) workshop where I was able to learn about the importance of maintenance and reliability through a three-week course. My participation in this workshop was sponsored by , a packaging production company. Over the summer, I was able to use what I learned through MARI directly as an intern with Greif.
My main project while I was an intern at Greif was updating their preventative maintenance (PM) schedules and making them more efficient and user-friendly. I started the summer by updating over 500 of their PM’s to have more recognizable names, and updated their task plans. I then created routes to combine many of the PM’s that could be done together. Creating these routes also made it easier for the mechanics to know which equipment needed maintenance and to better keep track of what has been completed.
Lauren Devney (left) takes part in a maintenance and reliability training alongside two other CEC engineering students during the 2024 MARI workshop. The training these students received during MARI allowed them to hit the ground running at their summer internships, coordinated through the MARI program.
I also spent some time in the mill watching these PM’s be performed. The one I found most interesting was an alignment on the vacuum pumps. Over the winter with MARI we spent a week learning about the importance of alignments. By the end of the week we performed an alignment on some small machines that were brought in. Seeing this happen on a much larger scale with much larger equipment in the mill was fun to watch.
I am very grateful to ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University and the College of Engineering and Computing for having this opportunity for their students. I felt more confident in my internship since I was more familiar with terms and techniques used in industry thanks to MARI. Getting out of the classroom and being able to learn in a hands-on environment has made me excited for my future career and has reaffirmed that I made the right decision coming to ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú and majoring in Mechanical Engineering.