The engineering and design class toured the Xerox manufacturing facility last block day to learn more about robotics and manufacturing.

After studying industrial engineering, statistics, batch processing, and lean manufacturing, the class got to see it in action at the Xerox plant, where the students got a close up view of the mechanics behind printer manufacturing.

“I thought it was really cool,” said junior Cooper Phillips. “I liked seeing how they made certain things, like how they made the different parts for all their printers.”

“It’s robotics, manufacturing, chemistry, and chemical batched processing. Everything is running. The robotics that make the components that go into big printing presses are in production, so they have like six to eight robots set up and they have operators there that take the students through the process, the engineers are explaining everything… They love explaining what they do to students,” said teacher Tom Kindinger.

This was Engineering’s second of three field trips that they selected at the beginning of the year.

“I liked this one better than Tinker [Air Force Base] because I was able to see the actual parts being made, instead of seeing old little objects I didn’t understand,” Phillips said.

Their final unit focuses on medical engineering, and the students will visit Mercy Hospital to view their biomedical engineering department.

“They’ll see how they test blood, urine, and different bacteria – understand how biomedical engineering works in the real world,” Kindinger said.

These trips are more than just a reason to get out of class. Kindinger takes his class to these facilities to get them excited about life beyond high school, and to get some hands-on learning.

“They were invested more, they get excited because they see how things are really done in the world. The biggest thing is to show them that its just not about learning it in a book, but that there’s real world jobs,” Kindinger said.