tion provided in some areas. Our tour guide was the Director of Manufacturing for Emergent. We went to a building that was full of labs, each with its own purpose. At the end of this building’s explanation, we were shown a board that showed their progress toward mak- ing this a Lean lab. They were working on 5S. Some questions were asked about the effectiveness of this effort, if it was worth it or just extra work, or if it felt annoying to worry about such small details. They told us about how they started work- ing on this lean effort this year and have already seen positive outcomes. One example was a small change that saved them $40,000 minimum annually.
The group wondered: If one small change saved $40,000, what could 10 small changes do?
The tour was followed by two 25-minutes sessions. They had four prepared: Emergent’s Manufacturing Process, BioThrax Process Improvement, Continuous Improvement Projects, and Career Panel.
I had the students pick what they were interested in attending. They chose Emergent’s Manufacturing Process first. This was probably most interesting to the economics major since they talked about the many steps they have to go through to ensure quality control. Afterward, he made a comment about how so many steps cuts into a profit mar- gin. As we talked about it, it became clearer how important quality control really is from a business standpoint. If these measures aren’t taken along the way, you could end up with a lot of product that you can’t sell because it’s no good. What does that do to a profit margin? It was interesting to see how thought processes change as one comes in contact with an actual business that needs to stay running based on the qual- ity of its product in addition to the theories of economics. The second session the students chose was the career
panel. We got lucky during this session, as most of the students in attendance went to the career panel first, so we were the only group present during the second session. There were four scientists from Emergent there to speak with us and answer our questions. They were at different points in their career and held different functions, from a first-year hire to lead scientist.
Having this session last was great. My cousins had had the whole day to take in what Emergent was all about, consider the many roles that went into manufacturing their product, and think about how their interests might align with manu- facturing. The panel was very encouraging to them all. It
Even though the US government, an organizer of National Manufacturing Day, was shut down, community members, students and leaders turned out in droves for the event nationwide. Here, a presentation is given to attendees at Emergent BioSolutions in Lansing.
would be easy to focus on the bio-chem major and just talk with her about her goals. And while the panel did answer all of her questions, they also engaged the other two students and asked what they were interested in and how they might fit within Emergent, other kinds of manufacturing or some- thing else that they might not have expected. For example, when one of my cousins was asked what she was interested in pursuing, she responded that it didn’t have anything to do with this kind of stuff. But the panel responded by saying that not everyone who worked at Emergent was a scientist. They talked about one person in particular at Emergent who had a job closest to her advertising interest. After the career panel, we found her to ask her some questions about her job, how she liked working in this field, if she saw herself here when she was studying communications in college. She, too, was very nice and encouraging.
The big take-aways from this experience were: Emergent spent a lot of time preparing for this event and it showed. Everyone felt very welcome, engaged, and interested. As we left, my cousins were talking to each other about the day and I heard something that made me excited: “This was a lot cooler than I thought it was going to be.”
I felt like the day was a success, especially when a high school senior who previously didn’t know anything about manufacturing except stereotypes left with a little bit more understanding of what manufacturing possibilities are and thought it was cool. This, of course, was just the thought of one student from one event. There were 832 events listed on
mfgday.com. The reach is growing. ME
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