4-04-2019
This morning it stayed overcast for a long time. I don’t think much of the clouds broke up until the afternoon.
I put today’s date on yesterday’s blog or journal I should say. Today as I was leaving a business meeting I thought to myself, “I am so glad that it is finally Friday and I can go home to relax for the weekend!”
Today is Thursday. Why am I a day ahead? Maybe it’s a sign that I’m longing for the weekend. My wife and I have discussed with each other how long this week has felt: it’s felt like a couple weeks.
The work meeting I went to today was an advertisement and demonstration of software and hardware, mostly hardware, from a company that designs, manufactures and sells manufacturing equipment. If I understood the presentation correctly, they even use their own software and hardware to develop the hardware that they sell. That’s impressive!
The company’s product line leans towards automation. I know that automation scares some people, but we currently have software and hardware that is supposed to automate our production and it hasn’t. We can make some of our products faster and, the increase in speed and efficiency can be maximized when the process is done to products that we make time and time again, but in addition to enabling us to work faster, it has pushed us to hire an additional person. This one machine that was supposed to increase our productivity, particularly of the man at the machine, has added to our need for skilled labor. I have trained this new employee to work with the machine operator to get the parts made, but I am frequently asked for advice and help in getting this system to perform smoothly. As our new employee has gained experience, I am more free to pursue other work, but the fact is that this semi-automated machine has required 3 people to coordinate their efforts to make good use of it.
Some of the software I saw today will hopefully speed up our process even more. If it does, I wonder how that will affect our work flow. Will we end up saving so much time and money that we can retrain an employee or two to do something else?
MJ Muñoz 