In 2022, Luc Vernerey set a personal goal of furthering his education. He wanted to learn higher level systems thinking to support the growth and transformation of AutoStore, the company where he works. The systems thinking outlook and combined education from the MIT School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management in the SDM graduate certificate were a perfect fit. “That was exactly the harmony that I was looking for in my professional development,” Luc says. He’s been able to apply this new outlook to his work from the moment he started the program.
Luc earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University and worked on several teams at AutoStore before landing in a team lead role for test engineering. The company uses software and automation to streamline order fulfillment for retailers. SDM graduate certificate students continue working full-time while taking the core class, which meant Luc was able to immediately put his new skills into practice. The test team was serving as both a development test center and handling quality assurance. When the SDM class discussed modeling and linking market requirements all the way through to end-of-line and factory acceptance testing, the relevance was obvious to Luc. “I was immediately able to bring some of the terminology and learnings from class to the test team the next day,” he says. “I remember that so clearly, because I brought it in and showed my manager a preliminary plan on how to reach a more structured and formalized test set and execution, within 24 hours of learning it.” Luc was also able to connect his capstone project to his work, describing it as a project that touched the entire product portfolio at AutoStore and that continues to have an impact to this day.
Attending the core class while working meant Luc participated in lectures, recitations, and teamwork from AutoStore’s headquarters in Norway, with classmates on campus in Cambridge and in other locations across the globe. He compares being a distance student with being a remote worker, where his classmates were dedicated to getting the work done and showing up. However, he valued the exposure to other companies’ practices and methods that he got from the rest of his cohort, describing his approach now as more global and open-minded after hearing about how they tackle problems. But the residence weeks at MIT had the most impact for Luc. “The weeks of being there, the pure innovation community, the constant pushing of boundaries and learning about new discoveries and new tests, it was second to none for me,” he says. “Those weeks at MIT are weeks that I will never forget.”
Completing the graduate certificate has changed Luc’s career trajectory. He’s now moved into product management, inspired by a guest lecture from Prof. Olivier DeWeck of MIT’s AeroAstro department. The knowledge Luc has earned has also changed AutoStore’s approach. There are now system architecture and systems engineering departments in AutoStore. The company also submits proposals for SDM’s spring projects, in which students work on problems submitted by industry partners. On a personal level, Luc describes the graduate certificate as a career accelerator with access to MIT faculty and both cutting-edge developments and the history of the field. He says, “It’s an experience that I’ll never forget.”
