GE Aviation hired me as a technical intern for the summer of 2020, however, this was disrupted as the US went into lockdown due to COVID-19. This, combined with significant drops in commercial aviation, meant that many aerospace companies were going though layoffs and canceling internships. Fortunately, while GE was no longer able to host regular internships, they were able to reinvent their program as the Intern Academy.
The program was in many ways similar to a course. The organizers arranged a number of presentations, lectures, and panels for each day. These varied from talks with GE leadership like CEO Larry Culp and discussions of company wide initiatives such as their COVID-19 response and ongoing Lean transformation to lectures on jet engine propulsion fundamentals and Six Sigma. This was combined with additional tasks assigned to use which provided opportunities to apply the learned knowledge.
The last week, I worked on a team to complete a simulated New Product Introduction (NPI) project. We worked to develop a new wide body jet engine program for the fictional company RPT. The team made design decisions to balance budget and project constraints with with Critical to Quality statistics in addition to making plans for its construction. Over the week, we presented three times to a board of GE employees.
While I did miss being able to get really deep into engineering work like in past jobs, my time at GE gave me a through understanding of the business side of engineering as well as the applications of methodologies like Lean beyond the supply chain. Design never happens in a vacuum and engineers must always be aware of the business context and rationale if they are to create the right product.