Challenge and visit in collaboration with the Copreci company and vocational training cycle in Mechanical Manufacturing Production Programming at MGEP

Challenge and visit in collaboration with the Copreci company and vocational training cycle in Mechanical Manufacturing Production Programming at MGEP

Each year, a visit is made to a company with the students of the MGEP higher-level training cycles

The visits are carried out with the main goal of disseminating knowledge of the industrial reality of our environment, seeing in a practical way some of the concepts addressed in the classroom and getting students to relate concepts and assimilate them better. The visits also allow them to become acquainted with possible jobs that they may carry out after finishing their higher-level vocational training cycle studies.

Usually, the students associate the visit with a leisure activity, which is not bad, but which should not be limited to that.

At MGEP, considering these drawbacks and aware of the effort that making these visits entails for the company and the school, a method has been established to obtain a greater yield from this activity.

In the case of the students of the higher-level training cycle in mechanical manufacturing production programming, a very satisfactory experience was carried out, as described below.

1. Research, analysis and definition work in the classroom

The students worked in the MGEP classroom as an educational challenge for some products of the Copreci company. Specifically, they included the pieces in the figure (see photo1). These are gas valve bodies:

The proposed goal was to design the machining process of these bodies (they were distributed among different groups, and each worked with a single body). To do this, and before starting the design, the students received basic training on the transfer machine.

Following that, they started a project working as a team. They were required to investigate and make a proposal based on the design of the pieces, in order to define a possible manufacturing process through which they could obtain the final target piece.

 All the details of the process were documented, describing the decisions they were making about the possible proposal for the manufacturing process. Below is a sample of two process proposals designed by the students:

After this stage, a visit to the Copreci company was organised.

   2. Comparison, feedback and contact with reality in the company

All these proposals for manufacturing processes were presented through a PPT presentation at Copreci. They were evaluated by a process technician, who commented on each of the alternatives presented.

They were then divided into small groups and visited the production plant, where the analysed products are manufactured, while the line technicians gave them the necessary explanations to continue the visit. At the end of the visit, a final sharing was carried out. After all the explanation received by the students from the line technicians, the students were able to carry out many improvements in the previous work done in class.

Conclusions

The experience lived with the students was very satisfactory, and on the part of the MGEP higher-level training courses, this visit, which consisted of “much more than a visit” was deemed a good practice, and a challenge was designed in collaboration with the company, improving the training process itself and giving the visit a greater and, above all, more motivating training dimension.

Thank you, Itziar Igartua, Ana Solís and the whole team for participating in the COPRECI visit!