In Summer 2011, I worked as a Robotics & Mechanical Engineering Intern at Panduit in Cumming, Georgia. Founded in 1955 and headquartered in Tinley Park, the Chicago-area manufacturer employs thousands worldwide. Its scale made the lesson immediate: a plant is not a collection of stations; it is a system where every handoff has consequences.
This internship gave me a ground-level view of a global manufacturing operation: materials, equipment, process, people, and decisions all moving together. Plastics, conveyor flow, extrusion-style production, warehousing, shipping and receiving, CAD documentation, and cross-functional execution stopped being separate topics and became one operating system.
Panduit · Robotics & Mechanical Engineering Internship · Cumming, Georgia · May 2011 - September 2011
The details below trace that system from material flow and production to a CAD fire-protection walkdown and the LEAN/Six Sigma habits that made improvement practical.
The CAD documentation project took me through most of the building and into conversations with people at their stations. It changed how I think about engineering: a design must be technically correct, but it also has to be clear to operators, maintainable by teams, and durable through a real shift.
Before this internship, plastics, conveyors, inventory, CAD, quality, safety, and leadership lived in separate mental folders. At Panduit, I saw them compound into one operating system. That systems perspective still shapes how I approach engineering work.
Panduit was an early turning point: drawings needed to survive reality; processes depended on people; small decisions carried operational consequences. That mix of technical depth and floor-level context has stayed with me ever since.
