Hasbro Project Engineering

As a co-op at Hasbro, I was exposed to the toy industry for the first time. I went in with the objective of learning the toy development process from start to end. I was a Project Engineer and my role required that I be present through every part of the process from the moment marketing identifies a product opportunity to the day we approve the final production samples in order to begin production of the samples that go on shelves.

I specifically worked in the Girls Development Team for Disney Princess and DreamWorks Trolls brands. In the early stages of the process, my responsibilities included collaborating with toy designers to develop concepts meeting target costs. As project engineer I was in charge of preparing all relevant documents to send to our offices in Hong Kong in order to obtain a vendor cost sheet. The vendor cost sheet allowed project engineers to determine how the cost of the proposed design compared to the target cost and how it might affect operating profit and variable margin for that line. My approach to reduce the cost of an item included modifying certain aspects of the design or identifying opportunities for reusing molds during the production process. This process required an immense amount of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams such as marketing, engineering, designers, packaging, project managers, and the engineers abroad. For this reason, clear and effective communication was essential. 

After receiving samples of toys, whether they be "first shots," meaning the very first injection molded samples of a particular item, or samples of an item nearing the end of the development process, it was my responsibility to schedule and lead meetings with all multidisciplinary teams to review the product, test functionality and quality, and identify optimization changes to each item. A skill that came in very handy for me, personally, was the understanding of the injection molding procedure and design for manufacturing. This allowed me to make critical decisions regarding toy production. At times, my teammates abroad, who worked directly with the vendors, sought my input to determine whether certain production changes should be made which might affect product delivery dates or packaging appearance. 

Overall, I greatly enjoyed working in the toy industry and having to think about customer satisfaction from the perspective of a child. Most importantly, I learned a new approach to the product development as it is implemented at Hasbro. Below are a few of the products I worked on during my co-op at Hasbro. 

Notable Work

Personally, one of the most rewarding aspects of working at Hasbro was getting to play a role on toys with music features. I put the knowledge I gained while pursuing a music minor to work. I was able to contribute to the development of an item with a music feature by providing insight into music theory, and developing music samples to test on the toy sample. Additionally, I contributed in developing the gameplay for that particular item. 

The items pictured here were under a very tight schedule as they reached final production. When our office received final production samples, we noticed the pack out did not match the originally proposed pack out. I took initiative and met with packaging engineers to address the issue. In collaboration with the engineer in Hong Kong we managed to communicate with the vendor in time to fix the pack out of the dolls, activity pads, and accessories on the final product. 

August of 2016, I ran into the three Activity Time Hasbro dolls at a retailer. Knowing that I contributed to the appearance and quality of the product was extremely satisfying!