2 Weeks Down

I started my first week at Intelligencer Printing Company in the customer service department. Customer service is comprised of several sections, including estimating, sales service, production planning, sales and scheduling. My cubicle is located with Team 2 of production planning-Don, Hilton, Susan and Rick-but I've done work in most of the sections of CS, but not scheduling (I get to do that later), and sales (because the sales reps don't work at the plant).

Intell is working hard to ensure that we (the interns) get to see and understand every aspect of their company. The company president Mike likes to include us in meetings and likes to check up on us from time to time. Thursday morning is the "Thursday Morning Breakfast Club" at the Eden hotel next door to the plant. Don't let the name fool you, this breakfast club is nowhere as fun as the movie. A group of managers meets for breakfast at the hotel and discusses the jobs the plant loses money on and tries to figure out patterns in order to figure out why they're losing money.  We had to go to that last week because our CS boss wanted us to be able to look at a job from a numbers perspective and find out what went wrong. On Friday, we were included in another meeting with all of the managers. They meet every 6 weeks or so and talk about problems within the company. Last week, they talked about what they are going to do about those problems. Each manager has a team of people from all around the plant that they've chosen to come up with solutions to problems. 

This week was spent in pre-press (or prep or desktop, depending on who you talk to). A majority of the time was spent with Greg, who is the color trouble shooter. He is, according to Mike, the best at what he does. He looks at press sheets and compares them to proofs, then figures out what to do to make the press sheets look like the proofs. It's pretty interesting watching him work. We also were allowed to do jobs and prep them for printing, which was pretty cool. We have one more week in prep and then we head to the press room.

For Labor Day, we're heading over to Hilton's house for a cookout.

Have a good long weekend (for those of you who work)!