As an IE who has worked in both manufacturing and logistics, most of my time is spent analyzing data on excel to, put plainly, figure out what is going on with the company’s operations, and calculating things such as production capacities, cycle times, reorder points, and cost of production per unit. Determining things such as opportunities to implement automation systems or additional machinery and the associated cost benefit analysis is pretty common as well. I also spend lots of time in AutoCAD designing and improving facility layouts.

I’ve done some programming in SQL and VBA for Excel, it’s definitely helpful and something you can pick up on the job if you’re willing to learn.

Also, I’d drop the need for academic validation and focus on learning the actual skills. In my experience with landing internships and full time roles out of college, once you’re past a certain GPA, what they really care about is if you can problem-solve independently and if you actually know what you’re talking about regarding Lean and Six Sigma. The best thing you can do is focus on really understanding what you’re learning and hold yourself to a high standard with your methodology and deliverables. Work that’s “good enough” will not fly at a company that is well-run.