Resume Update

I worked in Smurfit Kappa on their branch at Cali, Colombia for one month. This is the world´s leader in fiberboard packaging and paper, and it’s an extremely interesting industry. All the procedures needed to come up with specifics the costumer wants from the corrugated fiberboard, this is what made this organization the best in the world. 

I was in charge of a project which main objective was to persuade the President and the Vice President of the company to approve it and provide the necessary financial support. The project was an absolute success, I gave a presentation and they decided to support me on what I presented to them.

The internship has developed in meanalytical, communication and observational skills into a professional level. This has been a remarkable period that has shaped me in order to walk into the professional world. I´m more confident about myself and willing to take more responsibilities.

Friday Current Event

The unstoppable winter has affected once again my company. This time a mudslide destroyed one of the main tunnels that distributed natural gas to the company. This created a massive chaos since lots of the machines used in the factory are powered by this fuel. Also some of the trucks that transport products made at the factory, function with natural gas.

Although there were enough backups of trucks that used gasoline and some machines at the factory were functioning with stored natural gas. Just when the resource at the storage was about to vanish, the company in charge of the Natural Gas at the "Valle del Cauca" announced that the service was going to be running again in a couple hours.

This was great news for the organization. If this problem would've continued for longer the company was going to face terrible losses. For the benefit of all the natural gas is running again and not only Smurfit Kappa is able to work normally but all of the other companies that use this natural fuel.

This problem has affected also those who use natural gas to propel their cars. Those who work for school transportation or even public transportation have seen lots of losses thanks to this problem.

In times like this, it is very important to have a backup for everything that could be affected by the pouring rain. This unstoppable water is creating a lot of damages to people not only of this state but to almost everyone at Colombia. I hope this winter goes away as soon as possible, before the economy drops and/or people keep losing their belongings and even their life.

http://www.elpais.com.co/elpais/cali/noticias/dese-repondria-servicio-gas

Friday Summary

it has been a wonderful experience to be part of an organization this size.

After finalizing my part of the accreditation process I learned a vast variety of lessons that have become the foundation of my professional career. Although I already discussed on my previous post the new skills and lessons I´ve developed on these three weeks, I want to highlight the fact of experiencing a real working experience in an organization. This has taught me little things that some might think relative, but being able to talk to your boss without hesitation, make good relationships with coworkers, and manage time according to the working schedule has been extremely valuable aspects.

I really want to thank the CEL for giving me this marvelous opportunity. This is not only three credits, but a great time to take advantage of every second. I tried to learn as much as possible during these three weeks. I´m going to week one extra week at Smurfit Kappa as a normal employee at the lab, performing all of the quality tests of the corrugated fiberboard. The project I started about the accreditation by the ONAC is in excellent shape. With the approval of the VP and the first phase about the equipment resumes done, they have a great start thanks to my performance. I hope this project gets done as soon as possible. I will feel a huge satisfaction to know a project of this size was accomplished totally.       

Journal Entries Week 3: #3

Part A: create a presentation about my findings on the equipment and help one of my coworkers with an experiment analysis using excel

Part B: After gathering all of the information needed to create the resume of each machine or artifact used in the Lab I’m now creating an analysis that includes number of equipment, obsolete equipment and a need for new equipment. During all this weeks, in every little break I had my boss wanted me to learn how every machined worked at the lab. So I made several procedures of testing fiberboards caliper, quality, performance and endurance by a diverse variety of machinery. Thanks to this and by knowing the number of machines I could come to the conclusion of adding some new equipment and also dumping or distributing to other facilities those that weren’t needed.

This gave me an important lesson about inventory and costs. Even the smallest artifact was above $800 USD. There were machines of up to $40, 0000 USD inside the lab. So dealing with this high cost items you don’t want to be paying extra for something you don’t even need or use. This is the importance of having an organized and accessible inventory with detailed resumes of each machine.

After dealing with all of my tasks with the inventory I was asked by my boss to help one of my coworkers to portray a graph in a specific way. He told me specific characteristics he wanted on the graph. As I once said before, my boss’s biggest pet peeve is graphs that don’t “talk to you”.

There was a lot of information on all of the observations of my coworker’s experiment but he was confused with our boss’s requests. I had to carefully analyze the information and step by step come up with what was requested. At the end I figured out the way to satisfy my bosses demand. This gave me a huge satisfaction. My boss was really pleased with my performance and we even talked for a long time about my performance during this month.

This experience has been wonderful for me. It has given me way more that I really expected. I’ve learned a lot of new and even improve some skills such as communication with others (coworkers, bosses, VP, etc.), excel, work, PowerPoint, different experiments using high quality machines and most important of all learn how is life while working. I learn about the importance of punctuality, traffic, time management, working relationships and daily hassles. All of these aspects are of highly importance, and can only be really learned by being involved with a company.

Journal Entries Week 3: #3

Part A: create a presentation about my findings on the equipment and help one of my coworkers with an experiment analysis using excel

Part B: After gathering all of the information needed to create the resume of each machine or artifact used in the Lab I’m now creating an analysis that includes number of equipment, obsolete equipment and a need for new equipment. During all this weeks, in every little break I had my boss wanted me to learn how every machined worked at the lab. So I made several procedures of testing fiberboards caliper, quality, performance and endurance by a diverse variety of machinery. Thanks to this and by knowing the number of machines I could come to the conclusion of adding some new equipment and also dumping or distributing to other facilities those that weren’t needed.

This gave me an important lesson about inventory and costs. Even the smallest artifact was above $800 USD. There were machines of up to $40, 0000 USD inside the lab. So dealing with this high cost items you don’t want to be paying extra for something you don’t even need or use. This is the importance of having an organized and accessible inventory with detailed resumes of each machine.

After dealing with all of my tasks with the inventory I was asked by my boss to help one of my coworkers to portray a graph in a specific way. He told me specific characteristics he wanted on the graph. As I once said before, my boss’s biggest pet peeve is graphs that don’t “talk to you”.

There was a lot of information on all of the observations of my coworker’s experiment but he was confused with our boss’s requests. I had to carefully analyze the information and step by step come up with what was requested. At the end I figured out the way to satisfy my bosses demand. This gave me a huge satisfaction. My boss was really pleased with my performance and we even talked for a long time about my performance during this month.

This experience has been wonderful for me. It has given me way more that I really expected. I’ve learned a lot of new and even improve some skills such as communication with others (coworkers, bosses, VP, etc.), excel, work, PowerPoint, different experiments using high quality machines and most important of all learn how is life while working. I learn about the importance of punctuality, traffic, time management, working relationships and daily hassles. All of these aspects are of highly importance, and can only be really learned by being involved with a company.

Journal Entries Week 3: #2

January 18, 2012

Part A: Finish the equipment inventory with calibration dates and all of the information needed such as serial number, purchase date and price, brand, model and type.

Part B: This inventory task has taught me a lot of things. I’ve had to navigate through the organizations intranet to find several characteristics of the equipment. I’ve gone to the company’s storage rooms and warehouse and look through their documents to find the receipts of the purchasing date and price of the equipment. Learning how to navigate both via software and also in person has been very meaningful for my development as a professional. I’ve improved my communication skills since I’ve had to talk to a lot of people all over the company. Also, all of the information gathered about the equipment is being stored at Word and Excel documents with specific formats that the company likes to use. This has made me improve intensively in these areas by adding important details and also being able to create specific graphs my boss likes to see. He always tells me that a graph doesn’t mean anything unless it really talks to you. If the graph just by barely looking at it seems interesting and even expresses a pattern or a message right away then it works, other way it is obsolete.

Another really important thing learned is that business people don’t like long presentations, the shorter the better. Time is money and being realistic, higher management people want quick and convincing information. Taking this on account, every time I show anything to my bosses I make sure I know it perfectly so that if they have any question or concern I have an answer right away. This makes it easy for me and efficient for them. That is what they want and love.

Journal Entries Week 3: #1

Part A: create and inventory of all the equipment of the lab and individual characteristics

Part B: After a very important week at my job I started to understand why parents love to just sit back during the weekends and regain energies for the coming week. This is one of the little things that teach this class. Living in a real labor world has made me seen how meaningful weekends are. Normally I just played soccer or made any other activities with my friends. Now I just like to relax at my house and maybe go out for dinner. You really never understand little things like this until you really experience it. All of the daily hassles and stress from work can only be relieved by taking advantage of this free time.   

This new week brings me new tasks. After getting the project approved and all of the capital to invest in it, my boss told me to start making some of the requisites. One of the most important requisites is to create a full inventory of all the equipment used to test the fiberboard and paper. There are about 70 different machines and 10 calibration tools.

I just finished the first day of doing this task and it has been such a hassle. I need to look through several archives to find calibration dates, date of purchase and other information. The problem is that the archives are not very organized so I need to really search to almost every single paper to find what I need. Although it’s pretty annoying, this teaches me a lot of lessons. First of all, that having everything organized really makes any future procedure easier to be done. I will also learn how to surf through information both in physical and digital archives. I will also learn how to do an inventory and lastly how an organization of these massive dimensions manages to keep record of materials, shipments, costs etc.