As part of the Industrial & Systems Engineering curriculum here at Viterbi, I am currently taking a class called ISE 495: Senior Design Project, which is basically a year-long consulting internship at a company in the Southern California area. In addition to learning about team management, lean manufacturing, and process improvement through lectures, we go visit our assigned company to analyze their processes and optimize a certain aspect of their business. My team is working with Disneyland Resorts this year. Specifically, we are working with the Textile Services department at the Disneyland, Paradise Pier, and Grand Californian hotels at Disneyland.
Grand Californian Hotel
Yesterday I drove down to Disenyland with my teammates to take a tour of the laundry facilities at the hotels. We got to observe all the different processes involved in processing laundry for the 3 hotels, banquet halls, and all the restaurants within the theme parks. Going behind the scenes at Disney was definitely not the picture perfect experience you get in the parks, but it was interesting to learn more about technology in industrial settings.
Besides looking at huge industrial washers and automatic ironing/folding machines, we also go to tour many of the rooms at the Disneyland hotels to get a better sense of volume and different types of textiles the hotel team must clean on a daily basis.
Industrial washing machines
My team will be visiting the textile facilities again soon for data collection, and the industrial engineers at Disney said they might just be able to arrange for us to stay at the hotels the night before…for “field research” of course.
I’m a student studying IE in China, we are having a research on industrial engeering in Desneyland. Would you mind giving me some more infomation about what kind of positions in Disneyland that fit IE students?
Disney actually has its own department of Industrial Engineers that work on everything from making the parks/resorts more sustainable, improving customer experience by optimizing ride cycle time, and managing the supply chain for Disney merchandise. They are integral to the day to day operations as the park, but they also help Disney with special projects, such as figuring out queuing for new rides.