Engineering

In shadowing Dave Mcleod, I learned what it is like to be an Electrical Engineer for Uniroyal Goodrich Tire. Typical days for Dave Mcleod consist of eight hours or more depending what he exactly is working on. For right now is job consisting of twelve hours or more, because of the current project he is designing.

Engineers have many duties when it comes to meeting a deadline or deadlines. His current deadline is on the project called “The 4-Roll Calendar Drive Control Retrofit. It starts on December 23, 1999 at 6pm and has to be finished by January 1, 2000 at 7:30am.

On the day of December 8, 1999, I visited the Uniroyal Goodrich plant, in which I met with Dave Brenner, Mike Atchley, and Dave Mcleod. These people are very important in the running of this plant. Dave Brenner is the plant manger, Mike Atchley is the operations manager, and Dave Mcleod is on of the head engineers. Meeting these people opened my mind to the tire building process and how it is carried through. Tire’s, are not made by just sticking it through one end and out comes the tire on the other side.

An Engineer has much to do with the production of a tire. Dave is the designer of the machine that produce the tire, he is the person to call when help is need in completing the tire making process. The duties and responsibilities for this work require electrical design work and the understanding of mechanical work. There is a thirty- percent of circuit diagramming and opponents. Then there is a seventy- percent of computer programming. A possible starting salary for this occupation is 45,000 dollars. An Electrical Engineering major is recommended for this kind of occupation, but you can have a bachelor’s degree. Mechanical Engineering is also recommended for this occupation.

Dave Mcleod got his current job by starting out as a maintenance manager at the US1 Greenville Plant, now he is currently an electrical engineer at The Uniroyal Goodrich Plant in Fort Wayne. The part Dave Mcleod likes the most is the diversity of what is being worked on and the least liked is the pressure that follows. The percentage of job interaction with other people depends a lot on what he is working on. Other than that, his interaction is a high percent. Advice that Dave gives is for college students who want to get into this field is to co-op and learn the maintenance of electronics. “You will need to be able to adapt to change,” said Dave Mcleod.

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