I spent the Fall semester of 2018 working at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 plant in Sparks, Nevada for my fourth co-op term. Gigafactory 1 is a massive plant Tesla constructed in the High Sierra deserts where they work in conjunction with Panasonic to produce multiple products for Tesla Motors and Tesla Energy. My time there was spent working on the Model 3 Drive Unit and Battery Pack manufacturing lines.
As a controls engineer, this opportunity was my first job that gave me hands on experience with PLCs and writing Ladder Logic. My time on a lot of different projects, some as simple as reducing cycle time on bottleneck stations while others were as complex as writing software for a brand new line in the factory. I also learned that while the pace at GF1 is ridiculously fast, there are times when it’s critical to take some time and fully think through a problem. The fastest way to solve a problem doesn’t necessarily overlap with the best way to solve the problem.
