My Blog

Because it was my career for many years until I entered this retail venture.

When I say manufacturing you need to know I mean a company that produces a product with 200 people or less. My preference is under 150 employees because you can get to know your fellow employees' and their capabilities. When you can learn to complement each others strengths and weaknesses you have a better work environment and a better product.

I like manufacturing because there's so many different levels and kinds of education in employees' background. I myself am a Liberal Arts graduate with a History major and English and French. It's the kind of degree that has you end up as a teacher or grad student. I didn't do that. I was bored. I got a job. I was lucky - I could only type 20 words a minute and had no exposure to much of anything but schools, retail, trains, trucks, lawyers, doctors - all the easy things you can see.

My first job was in an R&D lab at a company in Newton, MA that manufactured photo-resist and electroless plating chemicals. These were used in the manufacture of printed circuit boards when computers filled the room rather than your pocket. I had chemistry in high school and a bit more in college. I catalogued the books, documents, sample chemicals and periodicals in their library. When that was done, they had me do research in books and periodicals in support of chemists and technicians.

Part of my job was to ensure the R&D Lab had equipment like hot plates, bunsen burners, beakers, notebooks, etc. I also was the door keeper outside the locked lab - yup, security. I was supposed to let authorized people in but it was hard when I kept having to look for the lab equipment. The chemists and technicians used to lock unused equipment in their desks and assigned cabinets to have it ready for their next experiment. We always seemed to be short and we were pushing our budget limits.

The company was small enough that we had lunch in a common cafeteria. I happened to talk with the guy who controlled the inventory that supported the chemical manufacturing area. Based on that conversation I had the idea to centralize all the R&D Lab equipment. I made the suggestion to my supervisor. She got permission to go ahead directly from the CEO. No special forms filled out with cost justification - just a common sense approach.

We had to create a stockroom. This required an internal work request because the maintenance crew (not just cleaning) because they had to schedule the work. I had input to the size the room should be - remember geometry? That was an interesting exercise. I learned alot from those guys. While the work was proceeding, I found out there was a Sales Lab with the same equipment problem. We consolidated both Lab Equipment stores into the same stockroom. We also instituted a flip-card inventory similar to the one used in manufacturing. The success of the project was seen in reduced expenses for both labs and reduced search time for me and I was assigned some new tasks.

I was only at that job for about a year because I moved and couldn't get there. (The company has since moved as well). I learned many things that I took with me: 1. Good management responds to employee suggestions 2. Inventory Control (that term came later) 3. Budget Control helps focus on core needs 4. Profits don't just come from sales, they come from all departments and employees 5. Sharing information between employees of different departments can be beneficial to the whole company