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.