Electrical controls engineer Rachel Granville was discouraged from her engineering degree at the start of her college years, but now she’s helping shape the future of Alkon Corp.’s manufacturing processes.
Rachel Granville was told by more than one professor that she didn’t belong in their classrooms while she pursued her degree in engineering at the University of Toledo. She was among a handful of young women in the freshman class who entered the computer science engineering program. By the time graduation rolled around, she was just one of two women engineers from that group.
Rachel Granville is electrical controls engineer for Fremont, Ohio-based Alkon Corp.
“I grew up in rural Ohio. I decided to go to engineering school about four hours away from where I grew up. And when I say rural Ohio, I mean rural Ohio,” she said. “Along the way, you are met with teachers and even classmates that don’t think you belong there, and unfortunately, we’re in a time and place where they will speak out about that. I’ve had teachers tell me I don’t belong in their classroom, and thankfully, I was able to persevere. I still met some wonderful people along the way.”
Despite this discouragement, Granville attributes her co-op program through the University of Toledo with the reason she followed through on her dream. “The co-op is without a doubt, what’s making engineers, engineers. Those three semesters of required internships give so much practical knowledge of how the real world works. You’re given the fundamentals of engineering whenever you go to engineering school, but those co-ops allow you to mold yourself into what kind of engineer you want to be.”
Finding her way
Granville had followed in her older brother’s footsteps, who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree just as she was entering college as a computer science engineering student. She entered computer science engineering because she wanted to be on the programming side of things but soon realized she wanted to see the tangible output of her work, so switched to electrical engineering, where she could have the best of both worlds.
“I like to see things with my hands, watch them work, and switching from computer science to electrical allows me to see the programming actually kind of happen. I do robot PLC and HMR programming, along with machinery design,” she said.
Before she switched to electrical engineering, she was questioning whether engineering was the right choice for her but her mentor at her co-op helped guide her. She also met her now-husband at the time, and he, as well as her family back home, continued to encourage her path. “My husband, my family and friends, and my mentors that I met through my first internship, really are who pushed me to be like, yes, this is what I want to do with my life. I have a passion for this. I want to continue with it,” she said.
Steering Alkon into automation
The University of Toledo’s engineering degree is a five-year program due to three semester co-op requirements. But Granville participated in a fourth co-op, which led to her first job after graduation. She worked there for six years, and then after some management changes, went on a job hunt. That’s when she landed at Alkon, where she had the opportunity to work on both older and newer technologies.
granville makes changes to the robot program to improve the process on alkon’s Brass Fitting Assembly Machine, which was recently upgraded by the automation team to accommodate a second style of brass fitting assembly.
“Alkon was looking to bring someone in house that had machinery knowledge and was willing to take on the task of not only designing new machines but dealing with some older machines as well. Outdated equipment is everywhere,” she said. “The fact that they were ready to tackle new projects and upgrade equipment and then use my troubleshooting skills to upgrade existing older equipment was kind of a good sign that Alkon was the place for me to be.”
Granville has been the lead engineer helping to upgrade existing machinery and move Alkon along in its automation projects. She primarily works on the systems that machine and assemble Alkon’s fittings, valves, cylinders, and other products. She also is designing more automated testing systems. “We have certain standards that different products must meet,” she said. “We have been pushing more towards automating some of those tests and then in-line assembly testing to make sure all components are damage-free. In the process, we’ve upgraded some existing machines with vision systems that take pictures of every part and verify quality.
“We are also designing new machines, whether we’re going to end up making those machines in house and using our mechanical engineer and our maintenance guys to build the machines, or working with an outside company. We’re constantly testing and verifying new methods of assembling these parts,” she continued. “Then we also conduct a lot of 3D printing to verify different fixturing and tooling. I’ve kind of became the keeper of the 3D printer. We use it to test out different fixturing before we put it in a process, so that we know by the time it makes it into a machine that it’s verified and it’s going to work, which will save us downtime.”
Granville has been with Alkon for about four-and-half-years and is grateful for the diversity at the company. Although she’s the only female engineer there, women hold roles in operations management, as supervisors, and elsewhere throughout the company. “Women are in every step of the ladder here at Alkon, and seeing that, being emboldened by that, has been great. It can be daunting coming into a building, especially whenever you’re new, to earn respect. It has been fabulous at Alkon.”
Being in a more rural area means that there aren’t many opportunities to mentor young women interested in engineering, she said, but Alkon does offer a co-op program. “We have had several co-op students along the way. I have had a couple who I’ve worked to ensure that they are seeing all sides of what engineering is going to be like in the real world,” she said. “They’re given projects. They’re able to stray away from those projects and learn about other projects that are going on, even if it might not be their projects. We really encourage the curiosity of learning.”
Hands-on creativity brings it all together
She noted that as we move into a more digital world, many people assume anything automated is done with AI. “But as we grow and as we progress in technology, you must have the knowledge to keep up with the old technology, too,” she said. “We are seeing a bigger decline of people not understanding or realizing that older machinery exists and that there is specialty knowledge that’s needed to keep up with those machines.”
granville works on alkon’s engineering sandbox test station. Here she tests a new gripping technology with its current robot, to test different 3D printed grippers with different sized parts.
She added that she still doesn’t think the number of young women pursuing engineering is where it should be but there seems to be a shift in growth. “I think the biggest change has actually been the switch from STEM to STEAM. It’s a phenomenal thing in my book, adding the arts in there. I know there are a lot of people who feel as though the arts aren’t part of engineering, but really it is.
“Having gone through engineering school, I feel like there is an engineering career for anybody, especially if you have that creative side in you. For example, looking from a machine from the outside in, you have to get creative and think what design aspects are needed to make this machine work,” she said.
“But in reality, we don’t even think about things like how the screen interface is going to work with operators being colorblind for example. Being inclusive on touchscreens that use physical buttons, making sure fonts and colors are easily seen — this is something that’s lacking in a lot of the engineering world. Bringing that creative aspect into it is what helps with inclusivity within the engineering world.
“I myself am an avid crafter,” Granville concluded. “You don’t realize how many artsy things go into the engineering side of things, but then when you really look at it, the people who are doing knitting design, crochet design, sewing designs, they’re all engineers at heart as well. They are using all of the same tools that an engineer would use to create these very creative works of art.”
Filed Under: News, Women in Fluid Power
