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CORVALLIS - In an unusual road trip, Oregon State University has chartered a bus that will ferry leaders of Oregon's high-technology industry from Portland to Corvallis on Oct. 16 to celebrate the grand opening of the College of Engineering's newest educational and research lab, the Lean Automation Laboratory.

The trip illustrates how OSU is working to further its ties to industry and showcase its growing research capabilities as part of its drive to build its College of Engineering into one of the top-25 in the U.S.

"We're only a short drive down I-5 from Portland," said OSU industrial and manufacturing engineering assistant professor Toni Doolen, director of the new lab and organizer of the bus trip. "When you factor in traffic, we're closer time-wise to Portland companies than many Silicon Valley firms are to Berkeley."

The new lab houses an entire surface mount assembly line where OSU faculty and students will learn and do research that will help circuit board makers fine-tune their manufacturing lines to make them "lean," Doolen says.

Unlike traditional manufacturers, such as Ford or Toyota, who set up an assembly line and then pump out lots of the same product, the electronics industry makes extremely high volumes of widely diverse components that are upgraded often, Doolen says. Workers frequently reconfigure circuit board assembly lines - often many times during a single shift - and each change means downtime and waste.

"Although the automotive and aerospace industries have embraced lean manufacturing for years, the electronics industry has not," Doolen said. "Mainly because it's such a complex industry where products change overnight, but also because there's been very little research about applying lean manufacturing to electronics production."

But Doolen says the new OSU Lean Automation Lab is helping to change that. By visiting local manufacturers to interview employees and observe production processes, Doolen and other engineering faculty and staff can then return to the new OSU lab and find solutions that are custom-tailored to a company's needs.

Because Oregon's high technology sector has grown so much in recent years, Doolen believes OSU is just the right place for the new lab. "OSU is located in the middle of the electronics world," she says. "We need to do this."

Jim Kuehn, the western U.S. regional manager for Tyco Electronics Automation Group, agrees.

"This new OSU lab will benefit industry by filling a real need for students who have both the theory and the hands-on experience," he said. "This is a big draw for industry. There's no other lab like this that I know of set up in Oregon. There's lots of theory taught, but not much hands-on."

Doolen says this new lab will change that by developing engineering graduates who are "work ready" and well prepared for employment in the high-tech sector.

"This new lab lets students gain true hands-on experience with state-of-the-art electronic manufacturing processes," Doolen says. "Students can now study more closely the complex interactions between processes, equipment, and manufacturing strategies, and gain a better appreciation for what it takes to design world-class manufacturing organizations in high-technology."

And these kinds of engineering graduates, Doolen says, will help the economy of Oregon and beyond. "Ultimately, this translates into economic impact."

Among the many companies expected to participate in the road trip are Tektronix, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Wacker Siltronics, Merix, Juki, and Tyco. To get on the bus and attend the 6-8 p.m. event, contact Doolen at 541-737-5641 or toni.doolen@orst.edu.