The OPEX Corporation is a family owned and operated engineering company that focuses on next generation automation through its warehouse automation and document and mail automation solutions to improve workflow, accelerate change, and drive efficiencies in infrastructure. These two divisions of the company produce different products from different teams but both share a mission of streamlining processes and accelerating outcomes. As part of the electrical engineering warehouse automation team this summer I was able to learn a great deal about the robotics industry, warehouse automation, electrical engineering practices, and OPEX as a company. These lessons were valuable to me because I was able to take theory from the classroom and put it into practice to solve problems internally for the company or externally for our customers which required a larger amount of context of how each piece of the engineering design fit together. 

My internship began with introducing me to the team and getting me integrated into the task management system that OPEX utilizes. I have previously heard of the Agile methodology but have not had the opportunity to work with it. The task management system consisted of delegating tasks to each member of the team with a point system to assist with allocating tasks based on the time to complete them. A scrum master from the team of engineers also worked to organize daily stand up meetings to help facilitate communication between the team and assist with any obstacles encountered. This system of tasks would operate on two week sprints which provided deadlines for tasks to be completed and guided my progress throughout my internship along with mentoring from members of the electrical engineering warehouse automation team. Further along in the internship, I had the opportunity to take part in a planning meeting where the team worked together to develop the tasks for the next upcoming months of work and action items. This was extremely beneficial to see how engineering work was planned for a business over a larger time frame which also required an assessment of task difficulty and possible errors or issues that could occur from increased complexity. 

My first engineering project was to quantify the degradation of capacitor banks that have been pulled from the field due to old age. To do this I used a program created by another employee inside of National Instruments’ LabVIEW to automate the charging and discharging of the capacitor banks to graph their charge and discharge characterization. In the process of creating a procedure for testing multiple capacitor banks I had heard the test engineering department had a more permanent rig that was used for verifying newer capacitor banks. I worked with my manager to set up a meeting with the team working on the test rig and communicated our needs for testing capacitor banks and from this we reached the conclusion that the capacitor bank test rig they were working on could be upgraded with my help. 

For one of the machines used in the engineering lab a preliminary test was being conducted using hall effect sensors to detect if robots were stable and level when passing by a checkpoint in our system. By sensing the axle passing four specific points along the rail, the time that this occurred could determine if the robot was skewed from the information the sensors communicated back to the main computer. Because these sensors were retrofitted to a previous control board I worked to make and troubleshoot the wiring harness used to integrate all four sensors. The sensors did not work properly and I learned a lot about the debugging process as I had to use an oscilloscope, multimeter, and reference schematic diagrams to try and understand the main issue which was resolved when the specifications for the parts were understood. 

Another useful learning experience I had at the OPEX Corporation was the opportunity to see demonstrations of the documentation and mail automation solutions as well as visit two customer sites in the field to observe how they utilized our warehouse automation solutions. The documentation and mail automation demonstration was insightful to learn where the OPEX Corporation started and was a great opportunity to talk to engineers that have had a long experience working with the company and on automation projects. These engineers were able to provide interesting context to the design philosophies that are still in use today for providing technical solutions to customers that leverage the OPEX Corporation’s technology. 

A tour of customer facilities using our warehouse automation solutions was led by a service technician and a sales representative which helped to provide a fresh perspective on how our technology was used in the field and problems that are communicated from the field can be understood differently by engineers who have not had the opportunity to see the machines operating with our customers. Seeing these machines in action also led to a better understanding of how parts and processes are implemented in the field as customer facilities make use of different features in ways that are specific to their business and customize it to their needs. 

One of the main projects I also worked on was an ATR box focused on testing the output ports of our machines so they can be connected to a main computer or other warehouse automation devices in a customer’s facility. This test box originates from the need to provide service technicians with the ability to confirm if our system is causing problems related to interconnectivity or if the problems are external. I worked on taking a previous ATR box design for the Sure Sort system and generalizing it to multiple machines. I accomplished this by testing the box on the machines available in our engineering lab to verify the wiring was correct and then documented in a wiring diagram. This wiring diagram is important because it is the portion that the electrical engineering team contributes to the documentation provided to production to  work on the assembly of these boxes for customers. 

For the OPEX Corporation’s Perfect Pick machine I worked to upgrade a machine in our engineering lab to work with an updated safety controller because the previous safety controller had gone obsolete. Part of this process included talking to representatives from Banner Engineering to verify the active status of the XS26si safety controller and its modules. This in person meeting was very useful for understanding how to communicate about topics with sensitive information to corporate partners who are able to assist with our design but should not be privy to all information on the project. This safety controller upgrade was implemented successfully because of extensive testing with the new software configuration on the programmable logic controller which required a basic verification and validation test. The verification and validation test involved functional and fault tests to ensure that the safety controller behaved the same as before the upgrade and the status of specific bits in the safety controller. An additional ongoing task has been finding equivalent or alternate components to replace components on the growing list of obsolete and out of stock components mainly impacted by the chip shortage and supply chain issues. Finding replacement components is essential to ensuring our production line can keep running and requires more complex predictions with software on the longevity of components and finding a large stock to source components from.

To learn more about my experience at OPEX, Rowan University, and my path to engineering, read my story on the Rowan Blog series: Beyond the Classroom.