Half Way through the Internship

Stuck in Nebraska for the summer I decided that I should probably reflect on this super cool internship that I am involved with.  I'm having one of my best summer experiences here in Nebraska working for Cargill in Columbus, Nebraska as the FSQR intern of the summer.

I am working in a cooked meats plant which focuses in a bunch of different products.  But Cargill takes its privacy seriously so I can't really say what products I'm making for what companies but we are making a lot of cool products never the less. Columbus, Nebraska is also a newer plant only having been running since January of this year, so a lot of my projects are focus on production start up so far.

Here's a run down on Weeks One - Six:

Week One: Cargill Boot Camp
This was when the internship started and we plunged right into being interns and part of Cargill. As expected this was training, as in plant training. Yep that's right we had to learn everything about the plant and how to be a basic cargill employees. The tip I got from the one supervisor in FSQR, "Coffee, and lot's of it." Some parts of the training were boring but parts of it were really educational and helped me understand the fine points of the plant.

Week Two: Experience the Whole Plant
This week was short cause of labor day but never the less, I worked hard for four whole days getting to help out in every aspect of the plant. From the Ready to Eat side, the Shipping side, Food Safety and Quality Regulations, and the Grind Side of the plant I got to experience the whole plant. Also the interns also got to meet everyone in the higher ups side of the plant which was useful in the explaining of the plant as a whole. This week was awesome because this helped me determine what kind of projects I would have.

Week Three: The Real Fun Begins
Now this week I was 100% FSQR's helper (that is a fitting word) I spent days working with techs and days helping in the office as I began to plan my very first project.  I also got trained in Locking Out and Taging Out machinery which I haven't used yet I (but is still cool to say I can if I need to). I also got my first project which was going to be a USDA Compliance Project. I was excited to begin working on this project and was excited to see how my results would pan out.

Week Four: Things become One Third of the Way Done
Let's get real the real fun part of this week wasn't that I was a third of the way done, but more that I experienced my first audit this week. A customer audited our plant taking a look at the whole plant to make sure we met or were above the standards that they want for their product. What was cool with this operation was that I got to see what it looks like when a customer audits a plant and the grunt work involved with the plant as well.  This was a great experience and I learned a valuable lesson of knowing the importance of the audit process.

Week Five: Things get a bit Interesting
While I continue project one I get approached by two of my supervisors to begin working on another two projects. So now instead of two projects I have three. Wait, how does that work? My second project wasn't too hard it was a machine validation, aka does this machine preform as expected? The answer was yes but now we had to confirm it.  The third project started interesting. I was told to begin gathering data but didn't have a lot to go from.

Week Six: Kaizen Sounds cool to me
This week I didn't do my usual work on your project this week. I got the chance to participate in a Kaizen Event for the plant as part of the FSQR representation. Kaizen Events are cross functional team events with the goal of improving effieciencies when looking at a problem. We had members from all aspects of the plant on the team and we worked hard trying to find ways to improve the process in one area of the plant. I learned a lot about efficiencies during this week and now I think about ways to improve the plant as a whole a lot more often.

So there you have it my first six weeks summarized out here. Expect a couple more blog posts really hitting some cooler topics of the plant and working in the Ag Industry and ways to bring it back to students in the classroom.