Each January, the LGO domestic plant trek offers students a unique opportunity to bring together their leadership experience with the program's vital connection to its industry partners. The two-week tour of LGO partner companies throughout North America is organized entirely by a student committee, and brings the entire LGO first-year class to a variety of manufacturing and operations sites across different industry sectors.
For students, the plant trek represents a defining experience in their LGO careers as they see real-life applications of their management and engineering studies, connect with executives and line managers of LGO partner companies, and strengthen bonds with their classmates. For partners, the plant trek is an opportunity to showcase their operations to potential interns and recruits. Both students and partners also benefit from the in-depth confidential site assessments that the class presents after the trek to each industry host. At each stop, LGO alumni facilitate site visits at their companies and arrange gatherings of local graduates to meet the current students.
Together with local plant visits during the summer, students typically visit 12-15 companies in their first year at LGO. During 2011, plant visits included Amgen, Genzyme, National Grid, New Balance, Raytheon and UTC/Pratt & Whitney in the Boston area, and the 2012 domestic plant trek is expected to visit Amazon (Phoenix), Amgen (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Boeing (Seattle), Caterpillar (Peoria, Illinois), Dell (Austin, Texas), Ford (Detroit), and General Motors (Detroit).
Along with the domestic plant trek, LGO students can see international operations and manufacturing up close through the LGO international plant trek, which takes place every year during spring break The trek will return to China in 2012 as part of its even-year visits reinforcing MIT's collaboration with the China LGO program. In 2011, the international plant trek visited Argentina and Brazil, touring the operations of ABB, Caterpillar, Dell/GM, Flextronics/Embraer, and Volkswagen. Other international plant trek destinations in recent years have included Eastern Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Approximately half of the LGO class participates in the international plant trek.
Learn more about LGO's global opportunities
Plant trek inspires LGO students with inside look at U.S. manufacturing
The 2011 Plant Trek
Limor Zehavi, LGO '12, wrote a student blog post about the 2011 International Plant Trek
The Adventures of International Plant Trek South America
