Today, we began the day with another company visit, this time to a company that is very familiar to Pitt, Eaton. After this we were given some free time to get lunch in the city, and I used this as an opportunity to get lunch at my favorite restaurant in Prague, Kantyna. Finally, after a very filling lunch, we visited the Cold War museum, which is located underneath Wenceslas Square, in a Soviet-Era fallout shelter. In the evening, we ended our day with a walking ghost tour in the Old Town.
I was fascinated by the whole operation at Eaton, especially the breadth of the product range that they offer. The location we visited is specifically an R&D center, and they focus on new product development, and idea validation. As a Mechanical Engineer, I was especially intrigued by the aircraft division, and I learned that Eaton supplies many parts to all the current production Boeing aircraft, and, also the GE9X engine, developed by General Electric, which is arguably the most advanced aircraft engine to date.
When it comes to engineering challenges faced by Eaton, I found it a very interesting task to engineer for many different fields, and business models. For example, the aircraft industry is quite a slow moving industry, in terms of innovation, while the field of electronic control systems is one of the fastest changing in the world. Eaton must balance different engineering approaches in order to be successful in all these markets, and in the facility we visited, R&D is done for all these sectors.
Swanson School of Engineering 