Alcoa Internships

I spent my summer in an internship as ABS Specialist at Alcoa Davenport Works. Alcoa Davenport Works is located on the Mississippi River just outside Davenport, Iowa. They boast a 220″ aluminum rolling mill, the largest in the world (and I mean they REALLY boast about it! I think that little fact was mentioned to me 10-15 times in my first 2 weeks).
ABS is also known as Alcoa Business Systems. This is the Lean Manufacturing group for Alcoa. My primary goal for the summer was to advance the TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) Level for two production centers. This is one of the cornerstones of ABS. During the 12 weeks I was with Alcoa, I led nearly 20 TPM events. These events were a combination of training and inspection for the production and maintenance crew members. I also participated in 2 Kaizen Events, one of which focused on fatality prevention.
Interning at Alcoa was a great learning experience! Compared to my previous experience at Lafarge as a Process Engineer, I was a VERY TINY fish in a VERY LARGE pond at Alcoa. (Did I mention they have the world’s largest reversing aluminum mill?) In addition to the sheer size of the equipment, Davenport Works is one of the Quad Cities largest employers, with just under 2000 employees! A little intimidating to start out. I was given about 2 weeks to get settled and do quite a bit of reading on Total Productive Maintenance and TPS (Toyota Production Systems, the basis of ABS). Then it was time to DIVE in! I developed a training program for the TPM Level 4, conducted 5S analysis for the production centers I was assigned to, and participated and led MANY TPM workshops. At the half-way point in the internship, I had the honor of seeing one of my production centers pass their assessment and achieve Level 1 of TPM!

Like I said, tiny fish in a huge pond. But, the scale is attractive, not a "con."

Intern at both a large and small company.

I worked on blades for inside of engines, some stuff for outside of the engines the stuff I'm working on is mostly small parts. This Alcoa division ships to GE, Pratt, and Whitney.

This internship was exactly what I was looking for. I got to learn a lot about lean manufacturing. I'm getting some experience about making decisions about designing a cell, which is really good for me. The best part is learning. Everyone around you, you watch them and they teach you how to do things. I can really tell how I think about things differently now, then when I started. You learn so much actually being out there in the field.

Pretty long hours.

I also interned at GE after my freshmen year. Start searching for engineering summer internships early in college.

I worked in the Alcoa Wheel and Transportation Products group in Charlotte, NC over the summer. I really enjoyed learning the sales process at that level. Selling wheels is a surprisingly huge business. I basically worked with the national sales manager on special projects including re-mapping certain zones, reporting on successful markets, and working on the sharepoint site. I learned that keeping a sales team happy and productive is a difficult task. Overall, everybody at Alcoa was nice and helpful to me during the internship.

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I'd recommend this internship at Alcoa to any other student interesting in sales or strategy. This was definitely more consultative than sales.