Office of Engineering Student Programs: Undergraduate Co-op

Rockwell Automation

A Co-op All-Star

By Jessica Oslund CWRU ‘08

Rockwell Automation designs industrial automation controls and information solutions for manufacturers around the globe. Their Mayfield Heights facility has been working with the Office of Cooperative Education for over twenty years. Since that time, seventy-five Case students have had the opportunity to learn about industry from one of the major players. Rockwell Automation provides services behind the scenes, creating products for everyone from Universal Studios to NASA to the Navy. Without their products, rockets would not launch so smoothly. Neither would Broadway musicals.

The Co-op Program

Students participating in a co-op at Rockwell benefit from one of the most finely honed programs available. The Mayfield Heights facility hires anywhere from 10 to 20 co-ops at a time to work in a wide spectrum of groups within the company, including Software Engineering, Embedded Engineering, Marketing, IT, Tech Support, Graphical User Interface (GUI), Graphics, Human Resources and Project Management. Co-ops have mobility within their assignment, interacting with different groups; some students even come back for a second co-op, to work in another area. The facility focuses their recruitment efforts on Ohio universities, with an emphasis on Case Western Reserve, Cleveland State, and Ohio State.

Rahul Patel, a Co-op Recruiting Lead, believes Case has given him some of the most academically and professionally prepared co-op candidates. “Sometimes I’m envious of projects or programs they go through. It’s a really great engineering school,” he says. “The students are also really mature, from a professional standpoint. The co-op office and the course work have done a great job of getting them up to speed on how you work in an environment like Rockwell’s.” The first step in the Rockwell interview process is on-campus; this interview is more behavioral than technical, to narrow the initial field of applicants. A “Round Robin” interview follows, a full day of events and interviews on-site at the Mayfield Heights facility. Patel describes professionalism, attitude, aptitude to learn, interpersonal skills, and academic mastery as the qualities that make a stand-out candidate.

Once hired, each student receives a personalized “Student Associate Roadmap,” detailing the goals, projects, training and responsibilities of their Co-op term. Establishing mutual goals at the outset virtually ensures that a Co-op will be busy and challenged, but not lost; it allows the department and the co-op to achieve success together. Map in hand, co-ops spend the first three to four weeks in training. During this time, they even take a week long course usually reserved for salespeople that familiarizes them with all areas of the company. They are assigned a mentor, who spends several weeks helping the co-op get acclimated. Mentors introduce the student to everything from source control to anomaly tracking software to the code base, and remain available to guide the student and answer questions throughout their co-op term.

By the time their training process is complete, the co-op understands what the products are, what Rockwell really does, and what kind of solutions they provide. Then, they launch into a project. Sara Cummins, a Case student currently co-oping at Rockwell, is working on the RSLogix 5000 software, an integrated development environment for industrial controllers. With this software, an industrial engineer who wants to change the direction of the conveyor belts in his bottling plant can easily create controllers to do that for him. The group is always adding features and enhancements onto the environment, so one of Sara’s current assignments is checking for—and addressing— anomalies in the software. When Brian Szuter was a Rockwell co-op, he added enhancements to the RSLogix 5000 GUI, improving the visual interface of the Phase Monitor of RSLogix 5000, a finite state machine used by process engineers to monitor the state of their processes as they execute. These are fairly typical “Low-Hanging Fruit” projects given to co-ops, who are also responsible for weekly services unit tests—setting up the tests to run, monitoring them for problems, checking the results for anomalies, and publishing the results. These types of projects keep co-ops busy, but are not just busy-work.

Like all employees, co-ops are encouraged to attend Reading Groups, where they read and discuss a seminal industry text. This supplements the student’s academic knowledge, allowing them to learn about professional software development right alongside professionals. One example of a Reading Group Text is About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, by Alan Cooper. Szuter, now a full-time software engineer at Rockwell, explains that interaction design is “one thing that really drives the industry, the whole software development area. When you have software people like using, they won’t just jump ship for the next competitor that has your feature plus one. They’ll actually enjoy using your software.” But “that’s something that not a single course at Case ever really touched on, because they focus more on computer science than the software engineering aspect. Co-op gives you a different perspective, compared to all the theoretical knowledge that is your academic base. It helps you develop the building blocks for what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your career, plus the real skills that you’re going to be using day to day.” With such a strong focus on continuous development, it is no wonder that Rockwell places such importance on their co-op program.

The Culture

As students learn, Rockwell offers a very embracing corporate culture that is always looking for new ideas and new ways to satisfy their employees. The Mayfield Heights facility features a fitness room, cafeteria, and convenience store on-site for their 2,000 employees. But the facility’s amenities are definitely not the only manifestation of their inclusive culture. Rockwell has a culture of ideas—a necessary element for any company that wants to stay on the cutting edge of technology. With that comes a culture of personal leadership, where, according to Rahul Patel, “you have the drive, if you are driven, if you have the knowledge, everything is open.”

Personal leadership is more than just a corporate buzzword to Rockwell management and employees. Even co-ops benefit from this foundational value, like Luke Wisniewski, who spent two co-op terms at Rockwell, a total of fourteen months. Luke worked in different groups, familiarizing himself with many sections of the company. In addition to his duties as a co-op, he helped start the Young Professionals at the Mayfield Heights facility, an interest group that plans social and career building events for employees, which they modeled after another group out of the Milwaukee office—with their own personal touch. In addition to the occasional Whirly Ball game, the Young Professionals recently brought in a Rockwell District Manager, to give a talk about his own career as well how to move up the ladder—by trying new things, developing relationships with management, pursuing your interests, etc. During his time at Rockwell, Luke also developed a mentoring relationship with a Cleveland area high school student participating in Rockwell’s internship program, which is mainly geared towards diversity candidates. Although he was just a college student, Luke was driven to integrate himself into the environment at Rockwell, and operated with the full support and faith of both management and senior engineers. Patel believes that Luke is an excellent example of the opportunities available to an ambitious and dedicated student, that it “shows the maturity of both the co-op and the organization.” Two years after his last co-op, Luke continues to exemplify the value of personal leadership and its importance within the Rockwell culture. Now a Case Alumnus, he is currently working full-time at their Headquarters in Milwaukee as a member of the Leadership Development Program; participants complete four six-month rotations in Product Development, Marketing, Commercial Engineering, and Quality Assurance.

The Market

Some students worry about the viability of an engineering job in a post-globalization world, at least those who are fans of Thomas Friedman. But Rahul Patel feels those fears are largely unfounded. “At Rockwell, one of the main goals for the co-op program is to hire full-time engineers, and that’s why we put so much effort and emphasis on the co-op program, he says. “It is extremely, extremely difficult to find qualified engineers. We want to hire, but it’s difficult to find the talent we are looking for.”

Rockwell has a dominant market share in the United States, so they are looking to expand both their talent share and their market share. Although their American facilities are always looking for engineers, Rockwell is globalizing. They are expanding into China, India, Eastern Europe, and Singapore to serve those local markets—an endeavor that directly benefits their U.S.-based engineers. Rockwell’s International Rotation program allows Rockwell engineers to spend time in the international facilities, learning about those markets and generally expanding their knowledge to become better engineers. For Rockwell and their employees, globalization is helping, not hurting. It means unparalleled growth and expansion. At the Mayfield Heights facility, they are even running out of room for new cubicles.

For prospective co-ops and developing engineers, the specters of globalization and the job market can be frightening. But at Rockwell Automation, there is always room for growth and new ideas. A company constantly growing and adapting for the future, Rockwell certainly has secured its place as an all-star among the Case Co-op Program’s industry partners.