In The Presence Of A Big Wig
Yesterday, I got to take part in a UPS/Kettering University open house-type event. Kettering decided that they wanted to try to attract more Chicago-area high schoolers to go to Kettering by showing them that they could go to Kettering and still co-op in the Chicago area. In addition to having co-ops from CACH (Chicago Area Consolidated Hub), the facility that I work at, there were also co-ops from Bosch and Argonne National Laboratory in attendance. In addition to that, we also had Dr. Stan Liberty, the president of Kettering University, and probably half of the VPs from Kettering, plus the Corporate VP of Engineering from UPS! Talk about star-studded.
I got a chance to talk to him a little at the end. I was surprised to find out that when he started at UPS, he was a truck driver. In twenty years, he has managed to climb all of the way to a VP. I was amazed. Over that time, he held some very important positions, including being the head of Industrial Engineering for half of the US.
I also got to meet Mike Ciavilla (probably spelled his last name wrong), who is head of Operational Excellence at CACH. His job, from what I understand, is to refine the processes that we go through. So, he is responsible for everything and nothing, all at the same time. He tried to explain a project that he hoped that the Technical Support Group (TSG) Systems Group would tackle in the future. Currently, sort supervisors have to show up to work about two hours before their shifts starts so that they can pull reports from different systems and prepare the information for pre-sort meetings. He wants us to come up with a web app that will automate the whole process for them so all they have to do is log on to the web page and it will have already pulled all of the reports for them before they arrived so that they can work shorter days. All I can say is that I’m glad that he specified that I would not be asked to work on the project. Sounds like something that will end up being assigned to Ray, our most experienced and only full time developer. (The rest of us are all co-ops, interns, and temps.)
