For my STEP Signature Project, I worked as an electrical/software engineer intern at rpGatta inc. in Aurora, Ohio. Primarily, rpGatta specializes in designing, building and delivering custom manufacturing equipment to suit their customers’ needs. By being an intern, I was able to make significant contributions to projects through drawing electrical schematics for these machines which will soon be used in mass production. Between tasks, I also wrote scripts to automate some of these schematics to reduce the time some drawings would take by up to 95%.

Ever since I started studying engineering, no matter how much I learned, I had one incredibly important question that I have been trying to answer. Of course, in my ECE coursework, I have learned a great deal about electronics and programming, to the point that I have a fundamental understanding of how most of the pieces of a computer work. However, I still could not grasp how it is possible that a team of any size could reasonably make a machine as complex as a Macbook, for example. I understand how the processor works, I understand how the speakers work, I understand how the operating system works, but I struggled to fathom the process where the machine goes from being a mere idea, to being a functional device in mass production. Through my internship, I was able to work on projects in various stages of development, which gave me a much better understanding of different aspects of the development process.

The real “aha” moment where I felt I was closer to my goal of understanding the design process was that in many of my previous pursuits, progress was made through somewhat disjunct groups trying to scrap things together that work to an extent, and the design would naturally follow. I have noticed that this approach has severe flaws, because a device which is not first designed will not work. What I realized at my internship is that on these projects, the device was designed long before any synthesis was begun. With a fundamental design that everyone is aware of, the engineers have a clear idea of what they are trying to create, and what specifications their work must meet. It seems so obvious in hindsight, but as engineering students I think that my peers and I are too accustomed to schoolwork, which encourages students to attack their work head on with no plan and no research, only going back to reiterate when their result is clearly unacceptable.

To be clear, the no design approach generally works fine for small assignments like homework where time spent planning and researching typically wouldn’t be all that beneficial, and that time is also typically better spent just doing the work. Once applied to a larger engineering project, this “homework approach” unfortunately sets the engineers up to fail, and the project to fall behind. A phrase often heard in engineering is “fail fast”, which is relevant here. The caveat to this is that engineering students often are hesitant to go back further than simple debugging of a device, therefore they do not allow themselves to fail. As an analogy, this would be like having a house that is falling apart as it is built, and fixing these issues as they come up, not realizing that there is no foundation to build on.

The concept of strategizing before execution is nothing new. It’s even been said by Sun Tzu, “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Even though Sun Tzu was probably not referring to engineering, the point still rings true that planning must precede action. In most projects this takes the form of some kind of architecture and specifications, gantt charts and deadlines. Essentially, being able to truly understand the meaning to the madness of managing an engineering project has made me more accepting of such things and has made me better off as I am put into more leadership positions in the teams I work with.

Fortunately, this increased understanding of project management and leadership in engineering has coincided with my extracurriculars quite well, as I was recently promoted to captain for Buckeye Autodrive, which is a motorsports team at OSU which does research in autonomous vehicles. This knowledge will be indispensable as I manage the progress of various aspects of our team and design and test new parts of our pipeline. In the long term, I believe that this experience will make me a better candidate for positions in industry which play towards my strengths and will hopefully lead to a more successful career for me overall. For now, though, I must lead my team to victory, and stop reading “The Art of War” instead of doing my homework.

Note: I was not permitted to take any photos while at my internship to protect confidential information.