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. Local plant visits in 2012 included Amgen, Bose, National Grid, New Balance, Raytheon, Polar Beverage, and UTC/Kidde Fenwal. The domestic plant trek in January 2012 visited Amgen in Juncos, Puerto Rico, and Amazon in Phoenix, Ariz., Boeing in Seattle, Caterpillar in Peoria, Ill., Dell in Austin, Texas; and Ford and General Motors in Detroit. In 2013, the domestic plant trek will visit Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Holly Springs, N.C., General Motors in Detroit, Amazon in Indianapolis, Caterpillar in Peoria, Ill., Nike in Beaverton, Ore., Boeing in Seattle, Dell in Austin, Tex., and Amgen in Thousand Oaks, Cal.
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. In 2012, the trek visited Sony and Nissan in Japan and also returned to China as part of its even-year visits reinforcing MIT's collaboration with the China LGO program. While in China the group visited Nike and Cisco sites. In 2011, the international plant trek visited Argentina and Brazil, touring the operations of ABB, Caterpillar, Dell/GM, Flextronics/Embraer, and Volkswagen.
Learn more about other LGO global opportunities.
Plant trek inspires LGO students with inside look at U.S. manufacturing
The 2011 Plant Trek
