Project
Details
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Date: Summer 2025
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Organization: Ball Corporation
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Objective: Design and rollout a new method of data visualization for team members on the factory floor, increasing efficiency and productivity.
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Key elements: Dashboard, operating procedures
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Role: Intern
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Achievements:
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Research into the most vital statistics to display
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Construction of an automatically updating dashboard, using skills in data science, excel coding and formatting, and graphical design
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Rollout of dashboards on the floor including in person teaching and work instructions
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Manufacturing Management+Engineering Internship
Ball Corporation
Notes
In the summer of 2025, I was accepted to work as a manufacturing engineering and management intern at Ball Corporation. I can’t say enough how incredibly grateful I am to have earned that opportunity. My project for the summer was to streamline and standardize data analysis and visualization methods across all of Ball’s plants in North America.
Once that list was established, we took those metrics and imported them on an automatically updating excel sheet. We then customized the excel sheet based on a standard template. We set a goal to build the dashboard to not just be purely standardized, but modular, allowing plants to add in information they deemed more necessary due to their circumstances, while still following the region wide template. We made sure to highlight the most important data points, and again got feedback from operators to optimize our design. While I would like to showcase the final product, I am unfortunately unable to share the same amount of media that I would be able to from personal and university projects. In the final weeks of the program, we rolled out our designs to largely positive feedback from the operators, as well as plant management and corporate executives.
At the same time, I was also given the oppurtunity to learn about operations, and the machines that the factory relies on. I studied the designs and maintenance procedures of the entire production line, as well as the engineering and chemistry behind support processes. I analyzed the incredible stresses the equipment endures on a daily basis, and ensured that all product was kept within tight tolerancing. In addition to the mechanical aspect, I was also given information on the electrical systems, and the computer programming that enabled the factory to run as efficiently as possible.
Over the course of the internship, not only did I learn so much about modern industrial engineering, engineering management, and practical applications of data science, but I also took away so much experience working for a large company. For the first time I was a part of a country-wide team looking to solve a problem, and am happy to say that I had an amazing and successful time at Ball!
In 2024, Ball unveiled their new operational excellence program, aimed at elevating and standardizing operations between their plants. As a part of this program, one key effort made to increase productivity across every location was a modernization of data visualization methods, specifically with regards to team members on the floor. Previously, responsibility of data management for a section of the factory fell on a single designated person who would monitor all machine data and direct either operators or a maintenance team based on if they deemed it necessary. As part of the operational excellence initiative, it was hypothesized that if machine operators had easy access to some of the key data, they could identify and react to trends indicating production loss or necessary maintenance much faster, without having to wait for someone else to intervene.
To approach this task, I worked in a group with three other interns in locations around the United States. To begin, we first sought to establish metrics which would be most important for operators to see at a glance. To do this, we analyzed production trends and looked for correlation between certain data sets and production. We also conducted interviews with operators as well as superintendents and other management, where we asked for their feedback as to what was most useful on a day to day basis. We then compared all of the individual feedback we obtained to create a standardized list of things to include.
