Industrial Engineering Intern

Company Description

National Wire LLC is a family-owned and operated welded wire manufacturer based in Conroe, Texas, approximately 40 miles north of Houston. Since 1995, the company has grown its product lines and prioritized top-tier customer service. As the largest local source of welded wire in the southern US, National Wire specializes in high-quality wire products for construction, agriculture, and industrial applications. With a 75-acre production facility, the company delivers a diverse range of products, including Welded Wire Reinforcement, Engineered Mesh, Building Mesh, and more. Committed to excellence, technical innovation, and customer satisfaction, National Wire has built a nationwide reputation for quality and reliability.

All potential candidates should read through the following details of this job with care before making an application.

Role Description

The Industrial Engineering Intern is a full-time, on-site summer position based in Conroe, TX. This role is built around direct, sustained observation of how work actually happens — both on the manufacturing floor and across the administrative and support processes that connect to it.

The intern will spend the majority of their time watching, measuring, and documenting current-state processes: how operators run equipment, how material moves through the plant, how shifts hand off, how orders flow from entry to shipment, and how the back-office processes that touch production (scheduling, receiving, inventory, quality documentation, shipping paperwork) actually function in practice versus how they are assumed to function.

From those observations, the intern will map current state, quantify what they see, identify gaps and inefficiencies, propose improvements, and help document the new standard. Reports to the Supply Chain Supervisor, with guidance from the Director of Finance.

Key Responsibilities

• Observe current-state manufacturing processes. Spend extended time on the floor conducting time studies, cycle-time measurement, spaghetti diagrams, and process flow mapping across production cells. Document what is actually being done, not what is assumed.
• Observe current-state administrative and support processes. Sit with team members in scheduling, receiving, inventory control, quality, and shipping to map how information and paperwork flow, where rework and delays happen, and where handoffs break down.
• Gather and analyze data. Build datasets from direct observation and existing systems to quantify cycle times, downtime, workload distribution, transaction times, and process variation.
• Identify gaps and improvement opportunities. Apply industrial engineering and lean principles (7 wastes, value-stream thinking, work balancing, 5S) to translate observations into prioritized opportunities with estimated impact.
• Propose and pilot improvements. Develop recommendations, work with the responsible team to test changes, and measure before/after results.
• Document the new standard. Create or update SOPs, work instructions, visual standards, and process maps so improvements stick after the internship ends.
• Support training and onboarding. Help convert new standards into training materials and assist supervisors in rolling them out.
• Collaborate cross-functionally. Work with production, supply chain, quality, finance, and HR to ensure proposals are aligned with operational realities and business priorities.
• Final deliverable. Present current-state findings, root causes, recommended changes, measured impact, and a sustainment plan to senior leadership at the end of the internship.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related field; recent graduates also considered.
• Coursework or project experience in lean manufacturing, time studies, work measurement, process mapping, or Six Sigma (Green Belt a plus).
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to turn raw observations and data into clear, quantified insights.
• High patience and discipline for  direct observation — this role requires comfort spending hours on the floor and at workstations watching processes before drawing conclusions.
• Strong written and verbal English communication skills; able to engage credibly with both operators and senior leaders.
• Comfortable in a manufacturing environment (heat, noise, PPE required).
• Proficiency in Excel; familiarity with Visio, Lucidchart, Power BI, or similar tools is preferred. xhyhwjd
• Curiosity, humility, and willingness to ask "why" repeatedly without jumping to conclusions.

Logistics

• Duration: ~10–12 weeks, August through October 2026
• Location: On-site, Conroe, TX (no remote work)
• Compensation: Paid, hourly; rate based on academic level
• Schedule: Full-time, aligned with first-shift operations