An Investment for Factory Workers: College Admission Essay Sample

I never thought that, at 17 years old, I’d make a decision to spend $50,000. Last summer, I had a paid internship at Fresca Foods, a small manufacturing company. For six weeks, I worked in the Engineering, Technology and Continuous Improvement departments; my main project was to find cost savings on the cracker production lines. At first, I didn’t know where to start. I researched lean manufacturing, but decided the best place to look for problems was on the factory floor, observing the process and talking to workers.

Eventually, I became comfortable communicating with the workers, even speaking a little Spanish. I met people with very different life experiences from mine, such as a boy named Jose. Like me, Jose was 17 and in high school. In speaking with him, I learned about his circumstances and empathized with him. He had a long commute and worked 10-hour days on his feet. I realized that Jose faces many more challenges than I do. That’s when I truly became invested in my project. I wanted to make the workers’ jobs easier so they could reach their daily goals and earn bonuses.

A potential improvement I found was that a person had to manually weigh cracker packs to ensure they meet weight requirements. It was inefficient and impeded the process. On a different line, I saw that a machine automatically weighed the boxes and rejected those that didn’t meet requirements.

I wanted to propose purchasing this system for the cracker lines to increase throughput and redeploy a worker. But in talking to an equipment buyer, I experienced sticker shock. It cost $50,000! My boss told me I’d have to justify it with a business case, something I’d never done before. I performed time trials and pored over sales records. I crunched numbers to find the potential increased throughput and return on investment. I presented my plan, which clearly showed the savings, to executives on my last day. I was thrilled when they approved it.

During the internship, I found myself at my creative best: first finding a way to improve a manufacturing process I was unfamiliar with, and then justifying the equipment purchase with data. However, the most rewarding part was knowing I’d be helping make the workers’ jobs easier and that the savings gained would be used to give them bonuses.