My Second Week (1/21/08 - 1/25/08)

Alright well today is actually the last day of my third week at J&J but between my two night classes starting last week which made for a very busy schedule, and getting sick towards the end of last week I just didn't find the time to update my blog. So I figured I would take this time to recap my second week of my co-op before I discussed my third week.

The second week of training was my last week of group training with the other new full time hires and co-op. As opposed to the first week of training which was more general and applied to all new hires and co-op's working in the SLC (Sales & Logistics Company), the second week was more focused on training for our positions as CLS's (Customer Logistics Specialists). We started by walking through a day in the life of a CLS and then spent a majority of the week in training meetings learning how to use different computer programs that we will be using on a daily basis while processing and reviewing orders for the account(s) we will be responsible for or in my case as a co-op, helping out with.

Outside of training I continued to help my mentor Catherine with updating the spreedsheets that we use on a daily basis to track our previous weeks and current weeks orders throughout the order cycle. As a CLS, we handle the Order side of our account(s) meaning we are responsible for our customers orders from the time the order is placed in our system to the time until the order is delivered. We constantly strive to improve our customers order cycle by reducing the amount of errors on their orders through direct communication with the customer, reducing the total number of days in a customers order cycle (date order is placed-date of delivery), and one of our most important metrics that we are measured on as CLS's and something that I will most likely spend a lot of my time while on co-op trying to improve for not only our Sam's Club account but other club accounts within my team like Costco and BJ's is our OTD% (On Time Delivery). An OTD is when a shipment is delivered to the customers distibution center on the customers requested arrival date. For some customers our OTD% isn't really an issue, but for others there are many oppurtunities for improvement.

In summary, I learned a lot more about the order cycle and its different steps, gained a better understanding of what my role as a CLS will entail, and started to become much more familiar with the different programs I will be using on a daily basis.

I will try and recap my third week here at J&J sometime this weekend if not the begining of this coming week.