Week 4 (2/4/08 - 2/8/08)

I am now in the middle of my fifth week of my Co-op but I wanted to take some time to reflect on my fourth week. On Monday morning I had Operations Microsoft Excel training. We reviewed some functions of Excel that I was already familiar with and others that I have little to no experience with and will need to use somewhat regularly over the next five months. I never would have guessed how much I would be using excel in my work but by the end of my six month co-op here at J&J I should be an expert.

Tuesday, I had my first one on one meeting with my mentor Catherine. We will be having these every other week and although our desks are right next to eachother this will be a time where we can step away from our everyday work and I will be able to ask her any questions or voice any concerns I may have and she can do the same. During this meeting Catherine let me know that I should start to schedule time with different business leaders, my other mentor Drew, and my manager Sharon. This one on one time would be to introduce myself to those who I haven't already met, and talk to them about their positions and experiences they have had while they have been working for J&J, and allow them to make any reccomendations or offer any tips they may have for me.

When time allowed, I worked on my power point for my "Get to Know You" presentation at our next Co-op roundtable meeting on Friday, February 15th. This will just be a short 3-5 slide powerpoint presentation that every co-op will give about themselves and what they have been working on so far while at J&J. The three co-op mentors and my peers will then critique my power point and presentation skills. I consider myself very good at making power point presentations, however one of my major weaknesses is definitely public speaking and giving presentations. As prepared as I may be, I just get nervous. One of my major goals over my next 5 months at J&J is to improve at public speaking and become much more comfortable infront of groups of people. I will report back on how my presentation on the 15th goes!

Later on on Tuesday I met with Gabe and showed him my refined LTL (Less Than Full Truckload) data analysis. He let me know that I had done a great job, which I was glad to hear. We discussed what we could possibly do with the analysis I came up with and what our next steps would be. He told me to setup some time next week with himself and a woman who is a member of his team (Donna Smiley) who is responsible for some of the accounts I analized. This meeting would allow us to discuss how we have to go about trying to fix some of the problems I discovered. Aside from that Gabe wanted me to try and refine my data even more if possible and to start thinking about how I could develop a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) or template for others to use for LTL analysis on their own accounts. Once I have met with Gabe and his co-worker and further refined my processes he wants me to put together a presentation on my work to present to my manager Sharon. This will be a project I will be working on outside of my day to day work and because OTD for LTL shipments has never been a part of our performance assesesment a process for LTL analysis has never been developed and this could be a great oppurtunity for me to offer some valuable help to the orginization.

On Wednesday I had my first one on one with Kim marino who is a Business leader within CORE. She told me about her 8 years working for J&J and offered some very helpful advice. After meeting with Kim I was asked to be a part of a newly developed "OTD Task Force." They had asked me kind of last minute because we had our first meeting only a few minutes later. I was made responsible for sending out another weekly OTD report named the OTD Top Offenders Report.

On Thursday I had 3 one on one meetings scheduled. First I met with my manager Sharon (refer to notes), then I met with Diane Zundel (another OTD Task Force representative) for her to breif me on the OTD top offenders report and show me which query I will be using to pull the data used to compile the report. After meeting with Diane, we had our weekly Team M meeting with Jamie Feltre our Business Leader. This weekly team meeting is a rather informal meeting that allows us to discuss any issues we have had and how we should address them. I then met with Drew my other co-op mentor and he breifly showed me what it is that he does on a daily basis as a account planner for Kmart. Before the end of the day Thursday I sat down with Catheirne to go over the PDP (Performance & Development Planning) goals that she had come up with and run by Jamie. These goals are subject to change over the next few months but they will be the basis of judging/rating my performance over the course of my co-op. I think the goals will offer a challenge for me but a challenge I am looking forward to taking on.

I will report back on week 5 sometime next week.