This is what the company I worked for last touted. A company of family values that highlight Integrity, Excellence and a Profound respect for the Individual. Unfortunately, my experience in the company proved to me that the values are just something that are talked about.
I actually came to them through a temporary service. I worked a manual labor job for a few days before I was sent to Beckett Gas, Inc.
I started in the Benders department learning how to operate a CNC bender, read blueprints and perform measurements. After 3 months working for the temporary service, I was directly hired into the company as a full-time employee.
I was consistently on-time and was never given a problem when I wanted to use a vacation day.
I hopped back and forth between 1st and 2nd shift a few times learning machine setup and working in every single product line.
Eventually I was brought into the office as a manufacturing technician. I helped make videos, did some experimenting in cutoff with different bits from a different company to get a more consistent cut before we got the new machine. I also worked on process sheets and documentation for production lines. I programmed Baxter to run a production line, did presentations for Manufacturing Day and started helping out the electrical engineer when I was able to.
I also did my first programming project as a manufacturing technician. We were using PG4UW to program chips and a separate application for data entry/label making and my supervisor asked if there was any way to make a simplified interface. I wrote the ID Plug Programmer which provided a unified interface for the process.
I was so useful to the electrical engineer, my title was changed to Electrical Technician, and I got a raise. I spent most of my time working with him. We worked on debugging PLC logic diagnosing complex issues with machines and building new equipment. I often worked with maintenance on things as well. If the electrical engineer wasn’t in that day, I was the one they came and grabbed. I also re-wrote testing software for an older product line that was originally written in visual basic, updating it with a UI refresh and a database design, written in LabVIEW. This was my first project ever with LabVIEW.
My title was again changed to Manufacturing Software Developer, and I was given another pay increase. The electrical engineer and I, along with a team of mechanical engineers, designed and built testing equipment for a new product line. I picked out and ordered all the National Instruments equipment and I did a lot of the electrical wiring of the machine myself. I wrote the software for the entire machine myself using LabVIEW. I also worked with the mechanical engineers on alternative methods of the testing process after the project was completed.
I was promoted into the engineering department and my title was changed to Manufacturing Software Engineer. I got another pay increase. I was assigned a project that would make it so the ID Plug Programmer could program 4 chips at once with a fixture that would eventually expand to support 8 chips at once. When I was done with development, I presented it to my supervisor along with the workers on the product line. My supervisor didn’t like something during the presentation and told me “It needs more work” without describing what exactly he wanted to be done before I could put it into production. So, the only reason this software isn’t running in production is because my supervisor just didn’t want it running in production. To this day, I can assure you the software and fixture were just wasted money. I have to say the software I wrote impressed me, so it pains me that the company doesn’t want to acknowledge the work I did here.
I had been sent to the Strongsville facility before to do a one-off office automation job, but I got news that I was being sent there permanently to be a part of the firmware team. I did not get a pay increase here. My Christmas bonus was withheld, and I went without that year even though compared to every year prior, my output was above expectations. I had a lot of experience with low-level code and already had a head start with the knowledge gained writing the ID Plug Programmer.
When I got to Strongsville, my first task was cleaning up the LabVIEW tools that were used by engineers and the lab during development of new products. I restructured and organized the code, making it much easier to read and follow in the block diagrams. I added safety measures for the values, keeping them inside the ranges expected by the firmware and added some color and messages. I automated the documentation that goes with the binary file into the vault. Before, engineers were creating PDFs by hand, then copying the closest looking one and modifying a few values and saving it.
I worked on 1 line of code on the firmware, expecting more work to be handed down to me, but never was. Instead, I was tasked with getting the testing software for furnace units finished. I worked with a manufacturing technician to get a fixture built for rapid development and testing. One fixture supported all the combinations of furnace units that could be run on the production line, and it was in the lab. The fixture also had the capability to be run remotely because there was no ignition during the testing process.
During the Christmas break before I was fired, I focused on other tasks. While working remotely, waiting for the notification that the wiring harnesses were done and ready for testing I got the voicemail from my boss. I was told to bring in any equipment and was asked to show the location of each software project physically on the laptop, then I was let go. Nothing else was discussed.