Assignment 3

Please check out my Assignment 3 and leave a comment on my Blog so we can share ideas. 

Link to my Assignment 3

I have tried to keep it interesting with some pictures and videos. One video is created by students and focuses on do's and don'ts when in contact with Chinese businesses.

I am looking forward to comments and critiques - don't be shy! This is how we learn and improve.

8-2 -- Critical Incident Analysis

When working as a Maintenance Technician I was repairing a piece of equipment that was critical for production at that time. There was a problem with the part of the machine, that secures the raw material on the machine bed in order to CNC machine it to the final product.

The repair should have only taken maybe 30 minutes, but we did not have that critical spare part in stock, because the same piece just broke several days before this new incident happened.

Knowing about the timing issue I didn’t want to lose any more time, so I phoned around for a supplier who has the item in stock. I then jumped into the car, picked up the part on my personal VISA Card to safe the time to get a Purchase Order, went back to the shop and repaired the machine.
On that day, I had an argument with a co-worker earlier and he saw what I was doing on the machine.

This directly translates into my “lesson learned”. The next time I will face a similar situation I will try to communicate better and have the people that need to be involved in the process involved right from the beginning. My supervisor was on vacation, so I was reporting temporarily to his boss. I should have let the manager know, even if it would have taken an extra 5 minutes, of what my plan was, since he was now my direct supervisor.

When I went back to the office (the repair took a total of about 3 hours now and the office staff already left for the day) I had an email from my boss’ manager to see him at 8am tomorrow morning in his office.

I was given some heat about the long delay for the repair and had to justify every minute spent on that repair.

While I was under the assumption I have done everything I could to get the machine back up and running as quickly as I possibly could, the manager didn’t necessarily see the hassles I went through, but rather saw that it took a tremendously long 3 hours instead of an easy 30 minute fix.

I was under the assumption that he would understand why it took so long and he would be happy about me going the extra mile and get that part, but he was questioning if it couldn’t have been done quicker still.

Definitely the lesson I have learned from this incident is that I should have taken a few minutes to inform the manager and not only the shop supervisor, about what was going on. Rather than just thinking I do the best I can, I should have communicated better to prevent any such questions after. If this manager would have been in the loop right from the moment I discovered that we were out of stock, he might have had appreciated my actions much more.

Source: http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/blog/page/5/