Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana

Benjamin Clements, a 2003 graduate of Union County High School in Bardstown , KY ( Nelson County ) and a Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate at UK , has just finished his 2 nd co-op rotation at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana. The following is a summary of Benjamin’s second rotation:

During my summer work term with TMMI, I was assigned to the East Assembly Maintenance department. My role there focused on the design of new equipment and fixtures as well as design of components to improve existing equipment. Along the way I also designed several small parts and fixtures to be used on the shop floor, these were assigned on a reactionary basis. Often there would be a sudden problem with a particular piece of equipment and a new part needed to be designed and built very quickly. These were often simple fixtures for mounting light curtains or proximity switches and my job would be to design these parts and have the kaizen group build them, I would then see that they were installed correctly.

My two main projects however, involved much more planning, collaboration and more challenging design work.

The first of the two projects assigned to me was to redesign the headliner install end effector. The headliner install end effector is a piece of equipment which removes the headliner from the frame on which it arrives to the factory and installs it in the vehicle via the front windshield opening. The problem with the equipment in use when I started was that it often sheared bolts off at the hinges, used linear bearings that were not designed for this type of application and therefore wore out very rapidly, and was very cluttered with unused supports and wiring as it had been through two major model changes. My assignment was to redesign the equipment while addressing the major problems, write the bid specifications and find a suitable fabricator and oversee the installation and confirmation.

The second assignment concerned a fixture used to hold the H-frame, strut and engine assembly. The current H-frame fixture posed several safety and lost production time issues. The actual design work on this project was not as difficult as that encountered on the headliner project but it did require numerous redesigns to appease all the managers involved. While the headliner project gave me great experience in design, this project served me in a different way by requiring me to work with different departments and keep each of their goals in mind.

I feel that I was able to sharpen my design skills on both of the projects but also learned a lot about over-engineering. Through my work with my mentor and with the group leaders involved I gained a better understanding of not just "engineered," but more importantly, "over-engineered." This equipment needs to be extremely durable and functional yet be easy to reproduce, maintain and disassemble. I learned to take what I had designed and then begin to strip it down yet maintain or even improve its functionality and durability. For me this was the most meaningful lesson: to learn how to solve a major problem in a practical way.

My role since last term has not changed, to assist production in safety and efficiency through machinery design. What has changed is the amount of independence and size of the projects. While I appreciated being given a great deal of responsibility, I felt more like a full time employee than a co-op. I feel that this semester has given me great experience but not as much technical knowledge as I might have hoped.

. My work this semester continued where it left off last semester. Though I was much more independent and the projects of a greater scale, my job centered on designing equipment to improve safety and production. The questions that this work spurred were also a great source of learning for me. Since my desk was amidst 200 other engineers I could just turn around and ask one of the specialists in my department.

The technical knowledge I have gained from this experience is centered on mechanical engineering and lean production methods. I was able to learn the fundamentals of pneumatics, electronics, welding and fabrication.