In the competitive field of computer technology, most companies carefully guard the information that goes into creating their products.
But one of these companies, Dominion Industries, not only has granted Engineering School students access to this information, it has set up a classroom within one of its semiconductor chip factories.
The Manassas facility manufactures memory for IBM and Toshiba computers.
The classroom, named the Semiconductor Manufacturing Information Technology Center, will be dedicated today in a ribbon cutting ceremony.
The students will do more than just attend class within the facility - they will actively participate in its operations.
Students will work in the classroom to identify errors that decrease efficiency in the chip making process.
The system will "pipe production data right off the line into computers in the classroom," said University spokeswoman Charlotte Crystal.
The University also will set up a satellite classroom on Grounds that will receive data from the plant over the Internet.
Undergraduate and graduate students majoring in systems engineering will use software to examine this data and analyze the plant's efficiency.
This is not merely a favor that Dominion is doing for the University, said James Groves, the Engineering School's director of Research and Industrial Programs and the faculty member in charge of the project.
"Dominion has a staff that recognizes ... that the way they can improve their process is by working with the University. [They] had some foresight and some vision," Groves said.
Crystal explained that the chips Dominion produces are very expensive and take a long time to make. Therefore, any improvements the students make in efficiency are "worth a lot of money" for Dominion.
Crystal named two experiences that she felt presented the greatest opportunities for the students.
The first is the chance to access Dominion's proprietary raw data, which is normally kept confidential.
The second opportunity she listed involves the software the students will use to analyze production data.
She said the software, made by Oracle and SAS, never has been applied to semiconductor production before.
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