Outsou-rcing
Project
Skills Used
Project Management, Design, Communication, Project Scheduling, SolidWorks, Time Management, Product Development, Team Leadership, Stakeholder Research
Boston Scientific Corporation is a large medical device manufacturing company that has undergone major acquisitions in the last ten years. This has led to many of their different facilities not knowing the full manufacturing capabilities available at each site and in turn has led to unnecessary outsourcing. An internal website was started in 2017 that would allow for manufacturing processes to be catalogued but not much effort was given to it. The project was handed to me about 4 weeks before my departure from the company.
The Mission
Reboot the portion of the internal website dedicated to reducing outsourcing.
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A Snapshot of the Project
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Conducted interviews with senior engineers to drive design choices.
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Led a team of 3 interns, managed project goals and timelines.
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Researched the unique technologies found in the manufacturing departments for the internal website.
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Characterized 90% of the manufacturing departments unique technologies through interviews and walkthroughs from senior engineers.
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Adjusted site format so that it's more user friendly for senior engineers based off of user feedback.
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Journey to Success
In approaching this project, I first took some time to understand the goals and what information would be useful to have for the cite. This meant reaching out to my manager who was heavily involved in the inception of this project. Once I was clear on what information I needed to gather, I worked to create questions for interviews with the senior engineers of different engineering processes.
I wanted to tackle my whole campus’s manufacturing processes, but the task would have been impossible on my own given the time constraints. I gathered interns in each major manufacturing division and convinced them to join me on this project. Once, we established the goals and questions that needed to be asked, we began the work of interviewing the senior engineers.
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While these interviews were being completed, I began to work on formatting the website to make the user experience for the engineers easier. I talked to potential users of the website to see what would be palatable. Later, I readjusted and iterated all while continuing the interviews, keeping track of the other interns and keeping up with the schedule of my primary project. I kept up with the interns for 3 weeks as we completed our respective interviews checking with each one weekly to determine our progress.
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Results
By the end of 3 weeks we had completed the project to the best of our ability and had characterized about 90% of the manufacturing department. I went over the format again with a few senior engineers to show them the progress made and to show them what the next steps would be.
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The Tasks I Undertook
I conducted research and distilled the insights I gained from that research into goals and specifications. I created strategy to complete my goal and kept track of not only my progress but the progress of other team members. I worked face to face with senior engineers and work to improve user experience. I led a team in a professional setting. I worked on a major project that would save the company from outsourcing work that could be down in house.
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Lessons Learned Along The Way
This project was an exciting one because I got to do a lot of one on one talking senior engineers and getting to learn about a whole host of different technologies while I was fulfilling my project. I enjoyed working with the other interns in this endeavor and getting to hear their input on the website. I gained a new appreciation of how data and information is catalouged for accessibility as I worked to make the website user friendly. I found that it enjoyable endeavor working to solve this problem of presenting this information that these engineers could utilize to save the company. Each engineer had their own unique style but I worked to find the balance and was able to get the project to progress to the point where it would be useful and that it could be iterated upon.
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