Transmission Plant – Ohio associate Rachel Lavrich has a passion for solving mysteries using a lab full of high-tech tools and ongoing materials expertise.
A shaft is broken in two. A gear grinds to a halt. A hole is discovered on a part that should be solid.
What happened? Enter Rachel Lavrich, materials analysis engineer at Transmission Plant – Ohio. Armed with microscopes, cutting devices, and other tools of the trade, she is there to solve the mystery.
Materials CSI
There are two main parts of Lavrich’s role: failure analysis and process confirmation. Were parts made properly or did they come with a defect? If something is failing, what went wrong?
In the Materials Lab, this sleuth is surrounded by at least a dozen pieces of equipment, including four kinds of microscopes.
Her favorite? The scanning electron microscope.
“I shoot the material with a beam and find out what elements make up the material,” she reveals. “When I interviewed at Honda, what appealed to me was that it was the same principles and same equipment I had been trained to use in college.”
She also uses saws, a belt grinder, polishing and mounting machines, and plastic analysis equipment. Surrounded by such large pieces of equipment, it’s almost like this detective has her own stronghold of tools.
Pursuing a passion
Growing up, it wasn’t a question of whether she would go into engineering, but rather what kind of engineering she would pursue. After Lavrich shadowed a materials science engineer her junior year of high school, there was no looking back.
“My senior year, I went back to that engineer and got to use the equipment and then do a presentation and report,” she recalled. “That catapulted me into materials engineering.”
Lavrich knew she was smart enough for engineering, but she wasn’t interested in design aspects. “It was the hands-on aspects that appealed to me,” and it became a passion that brought her all the way to Honda.
“There aren’t a lot of materials science engineering graduates,” she shared, noting that she only graduated with around 100 people. “Everyone seems to gravitate to chemical engineering.”
The thing about materials science, though, is that “everything is made out of materials,” and Lavrich found herself more and more interested in how materials are formed and processed.
Of the four categories of materials science—semiconductors, plastics, ceramics, and metals—Lavrich specialized in metals. It involved learning how metals work, and at Honda, it has involved learning every detail of the process for each metal, for each part, for each supplier.
Those metals are used at Honda’s transmission plants to make hybrid electric vehicles systems and continuous variable transmissions and four-wheel-drive components. But her specialty does anything but limit her: She analyzes plastics and other materials as well.
In understanding what suppliers do, Lavrich is better able to make sure Honda is getting what’s needed and expected in each part. And as she learns, she’s able to pull information out of those materials. They almost act as “witnesses” in the mysteries of failures .
Mystery solved
No mystery is strong enough to keep Lavrich in the dark. Through microscopes, cutting, polishing and other examination, the materials finally give up their secrets to her — and into her report they go, exposed to the light of day. With the truth uncovered, Honda can better ensure the dependability, quality, and reliability of its products.
The shafts and gears going into vehicles are as designed. No mysterious defects.
Only truth, once buried in the secrets of the materials.
