Me and 32,000 of my closest friends just attended a mighty energizing PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2023—the biggest ever, by the way. Needless to say, there was no shortage of advanced technology to dazzle us. But I also had an encouraging conversation on the subject of workforce development with FANUC engineering manager Jessica Juhasz (pictured above), who has a fascinating work/study backstory that’s more like what we see in Germany than what we see in the U.S.
Juhasz earned her B.S. in electrical engineering at Kettering University, which was founded in 1919 as a night school for engineers, managers, designers, and technicians in the rapidly-evolving automobile industry. In 1923 it was acquired by General Motors and became known as GMI, General Motors Institute. The Kettering name came in 1998. Located in Flint, Mich., and having a total enrollment of about 2,237 (1,516 undergrads), Kettering’s concept of education is unique in the way that it blends practice with theory in equal measure. In fact, all undergraduate students are required to complete at least five co-op terms with one of Kettering’s many employer partners. For Juhasz, that partner was FANUC.
 | Watch this brief video of FANUCs Jessica Juhasz explaining new robotic tech to author Pat Reynolds at PACK EXPO Las Vegas, 2023. |
During the 4.5 years it took to earn her B.S., Juhasz spent the months of July, August, September in a Kettering classroom. October, November, December she worked 40-hour weeks at FANUC. January to March it was back to the Kettering classroom, and April to June it was back to FANUC. “At the very beginning they started me off in operations, purchasing to be more specific,” says Juhasz. “Having never had a corporate job, it was a good way to get the big picture, to learn about the nature of the business, about how things that go into robots got purchased. But by sophomore year I was able to work in our manufacturing and engineering department, so it was being out on the floor, doing time studies, helping improve processes within our manufacturing department, and so on.”
