On Monday, we started our internships. I will be working at Boston Scientific, Coyol as a Supplier Engineer (a field I knew little about before this week), along with Hannah. The week started off slowly, with orientations and introductions to a very friendly team. The Supplier Engineering department is growing and changing a lot at this time, so many of our coworkers are also new and are happy to help us find our way through the onboarding processes and the large building. I quickly learned the phrase “we are lost” in Spanish: “estamos perdidos”. I have a feeling I’ll be using it often!
I expected to be presented with projects that the department wanted me and Hannah to work on, however, it quickly became clear that it was up to us to figure out how we wanted to spend our next 8 weeks. At first, this autonomy was intimidating, and I worried that we would not have enough to do. To come up with our own project ideas and get a better sense of what the Supplier Engineering department does in relation to the rest of the company, we set up meetings with each of our coworkers. They told us about the projects they are working on and we learned that Supplier Engineering is responsible for choosing and acquiring raw materials and samples for prototyping and production. They communicate with vendors and perform cost analyses to determine which materials should be used for each product and how manufacturing processes can be optimized to reduce costs.
Since the Supplier Engineering department can be involved with a device at any point in the product development process, Hannah and I want to see what each phase of the process looks like. We created roles for ourselves on the following projects with the help of our supervisor:
- Contact vendors and compile records to ensure that all materials being provided for in the acquisition of a small company are approved and accounted for.
- Assist the Process Development department with the prototyping phase of a device by testing parts and communicating with the local vendor regarding material samples.
- Write a proposal for a new material for the coating of a ureteral stent by researching and testing materials.
I am looking forward to the interdisciplinary aspects of working as a supplier engineer. Depending on the phase of the project we are working on, we will likely interact with R&D, process development, manufacturing, and vendors. Although I was initially nervous about the independence and open-endedness of this internship, I am excited by the freedom of working on a variety of projects and getting a sense of how a big company like Boston Scientific works.
After a few weeks of early mornings and tiring days, we decided to stay more local this weekend and catch up on some much-needed sleep. We took a day trip to Volcan Irazú on Saturday. The drive there was beautiful and the volcano was even more stunning than the google image search let off. I got about 10 hours of sleep on Saturday night and am feeling ready for another work week.