1. Gregg Steiner
CUSB Professional Experience Part 2
12/9/14
Part 2 – A
As a Service Parts Planning Co-op for Carestream, I had both primary work responsibilities and
project work that was both challenging and engaging. I was responsible for supporting a subset of
analog medical equipment that included purchasing parts from different vendors, planning inventory
using master schedules to maximize availability while minimizing inventory, and working with service
engineers and commodity managers to determine alternatives if there was a part issue. In between my
day to day tasks, I ran weekly and monthly metrics reports and was assigned to numerous projects in
order to help internal improvement within Service Parts.
Part 2 - B: Post –Experience Self-Assessment
Experience Description
Throughout my time at Carestream, I played a role in many projects that helped the Service
Parts business. I was both asked to participate in some projects and found opportunities on my own to
help drive internal improvement. Some of those include a Quality Advocate Project and Product
Discontinuance Projects.
After about 2 months of working at Carestream, my supervisor had me take a Quality Advocate
Training class offers multiple time throughout the year, which covered both Lean and Six Sigma quality
tools. In order to receive the certification, you were required to use one of the tools to drive
improvement in your area. At the time, a major focus was on the increasing inventory level of a
particular profit center because it was nearly half a million dollars over the corporate US&C AOP level. I
decided to use a Pareto Chart to display the parts with the largest increase, in dollars, in inventory over
the span of eight weeks (Appendix A). This project was able to identify the problems and propose a
strategy to reduce the inventory by decreasing, pushing out and cancelling purchase orders of specific
parts to operate at lower days of supply, or a more favorable stocking level.
Another series of projects I was involved in were creating Service Parts discontinuance strategies
for certain legacy products. There were requests to extend service support of certain products beyond
the current discontinuance dates because of the associated revenue stream. To do this, I created a CR
Product Discontinuance file that combined the data from our information systems to analyze which
parts were at risk for availability moving towards the newly proposed discontinuance dates (Appendix
B). Using this file, the service engineer, parts planner and I put together a presentation to present our
2. strategy and mitigation plans to support the products until end of life (Appendix C). Now there will be a
quarterly review of these parts to make sure the strategy is consistent with the current status.
Being involved in these projects helped me to understand the ins and outs of the Service Parts
business and how important it is to a Supply Chain and Logistics Department.
Self-Learning
After six months of working in a corporation, you absorb an ample amount of information in
such a short period of time. Every day I would learn a couple things that I didn’t know the day before
from my coworkers, supervisor or the resources Carestream offers its employees. On the other hand, I
also took it upon myself to learn many things on my own and some concepts I learned simply through
my experiences. I was able to learn how to apply the quality tools I was taught to a real world problem
in order to drive improvement, understand how to effectively communicate and interact with different
types of people when working to accomplish a common goal.
In order to complete my Quality Advocate project, I had to decide which tool to use and how it
could benefit the business. Shortly after going through my training notes and identifying the areas I
should seek to improve, it become apparent to me that I could apply nearly every tool to what I was
doing. However, it also opened my eyes to the fact that some tools will provide better information than
others even though all of them will give you some sort of answer. I was able to teach myself which
quality tool I believed to be most telling in order to analyze the information according to my problem
statement. I used a Pareto Chart because it showed the sum of the dollar amount associated with the
parts that had increased in inventory and my problem statement was quantitative. If I was more
concerned with the qualitative reason as to why inventory was increasing, then I would’ve been smarter
to use a root cause analysis or 5 whys. Learning how to use these tools on my own has given me a
desire to receive my black belt certification in quality because I know how effective and efficient they
can be when trying to diagnose and solve issues.
For the Discontinuance Strategy projects, I worked in a team of three that included a middle-
aged, female service engineer, two on the edge of retirement, male parts planners and me. It was truly
a diverse team with many differences not only in demographics, but also in the way we approached the
task at hand. Maureen, the service engineer, was more hands on and controlling worker while Dave and
Eric, the parts planners, were more laid-back and relied on his prior knowledge and experiences to
deliver a solution. And then there’s me; a young co-op with little experience, but an immense amount
of excel and data analysis skills. I learned that I had to let Maureen control the meetings and trust Dave
and Eric’s recommendations when it came to the parts that he had been planning for last decade. I
could communicate easier with Maureen via email, while it was more effective to speak with Dave and
Eric in person. Being aware of how people act and communicate its key to maximizing productivity in
meetings and utilizing their strengths with yours to achieve the goal. Furthermore, it taught me to come
to meetings prepared and leave everyone with specific action items for the next encounter.
It’s important to maintain your professional skills after graduation because, first and foremost,
you will use these abilities at almost every job you have and they will help you build your career. Having
3. great people skills is crucial to forming trust, enabling teamwork and achieving common goals. As a
manager, you need to be aware of how the people who work for you act and operate. This
consciousness can drive employee satisfaction, thus increasing productivity. More specifically in a
Supply Chain career, having the ability to use the lean and six sigma quality tools can increase your
efficiency at work. Continuing to build your skill set and resume by obtaining certifications such as green
belt and black belt can sky rocket your career. In my opinion, you shouldn’t simply maintain your skills,
but seek to enhance them.
Leadership
There were several instances where I was given the opportunity to lead such as when I was able
to drive change from my Pareto Chart results by setting short term goals in order to incrementally drop
inventory and administrating a bi-weekly trouble parts meeting. Each of these chances helped me build
confidence and learn through experience.
After the results from the Pareto Chart were seen by my supervisor and the rest of the team, my
supervisor asked me to see the project through. I began to dig deeper into detail on a part by part level
by examining forecasts, past demand, and current purchase orders. Once I learned more information, I
was able to recommend strategies for how they should go about decreasing the inventory by year end
and the potential savings associated with them. (Appendix D). This put me in the driver’s seat to enable
change and monitor it over time. I was able to lead the group on how we were going to lower inventory
in order to meet the expected corporate levels. Then, I continued to check the trend of the decreases. I
forecasted where we would be at year end with the current and future reductions and set incremental
goals for the team and each planner. These goals were by product and were monthly goals. Since the
end of the year number was the major emphasis, it was easy to get my coworkers on board with
breaking down the goal into a more incremental method instead of trying to make it all go away at once.
I had to be careful, though, to not make it sound like I was telling people how to do their job. A good
leader is aware of how to drive change without driving a work relationship into the ground.
Another chance I had to lead came when I was put in charge of managing a bi-weekly trouble
parts meeting. The meeting included my supervisor, the planners and service engineers involved to
discuss part issues that were identified as either currently affecting the team or might be future
problems. I administered the meeting by taking notes in a trouble parts log each time we got together.
During the two weeks in between meetings, I was expected to follow up on the action items given from
the prior meeting and make sure they were being met by the specified dates. When my supervisor
wasn’t able to be at the meeting due to a schedule conflict, I basically ran the meeting. These meetings
were great learning experiences because they taught me how to approach different types of issues
through certain ways of communication, who all needs to be involved and when to set clear, cut
deadlines. It became visible that many people were needed to be involved for even what seemed like
small issues. Most of the time, many people were required to be involved because of the mandatory
processes that everyone had to follow. As the leader of the group, you must be aware of all of the
processes involved because not having that knowledge could lead to a major miscommunication
throughout the different businesses.
4. Teamwork
In the Service Parts area, the culture is incredibly cohesive and is truly a team atmosphere. The
planners are divided between three different product lines, with some overlapping on two or all three.
We have team meetings for each of these product lines on a weekly basis and with the entire group on a
monthly basis. I worked within a team, basically, throughout my whole experience and the environment
encouraged collaboration. By being a part of the discontinuance strategy projects, as mentioned above,
I was able to work in a team that had to work together in order to achieve a common goal that had both
team contributions and team conflict.
I worked in a team made up of a planner, a service engineer and myself, like I shared in the ‘Self-
Learning’ section. With such a diverse group, you can imagine that there would be some conflict. I was
responsible for gathering the data and creating an analysis spreadsheet to manipulate the data to
provide the information we need to make strategic decisions. The data was pulled directly from reports
ran out of both SAP and our planning software called Xelus. I used this data and the given forecasts to
identify parts that would be at risk for availability before the proposed service discontinuance date. The
planner is used to working with this type of data every day, but the engineer is not and wasn’t too
trusting of the numbers at first and this brought upon some conflict because the way Maureen, the
engineer, interpreted the data was different than the planner and me. We managed this conflict by
educating her on the way the system worked and where the numbers were coming from. I was using
the forecasts and current inventory reports to calculate how many parts would be needed to fill the
required demand until the service discontinuance date. Then, Maureen was able to understand the
formulas I was creating and trusted my analysis. Once we got into a groove and started diving deeper
into the project, the group was able to stir conflict in a positive matter. We would bring in our work for
the action items given out at the previous meetings and go over it together. If one person didn’t agree
with something, then they were able to respectfully disagree and provide them perspective on the
subject. This questioning lead to many great ideas and identification of mistakes that most likely
wouldn’t have been found if everyone simply agreed with each other. We held each other accountable
by inquiring on one another’s work and collaboratively brainstormed when forced to think outside the
box on several issues. The team was able to use each other’s strengths to divvy up the workload, which
helped everyone trust each other to do good work because we were doing what we were good at.
Throughout my experience, I was involved in a team environment and was constantly working
with my coworkers to solve problems. It’s essential to use your coworkers as resources because
everyone has had different work experience and roles and you never know when their background could
be informative.
Service
From my co-op experience, I think it’s important to provide service to your university in order to
provide a channel for others from your alma mater to have the opportunities that you did. I was able to
get an interview at Carestream because I sold Clarkson’s School of Business legitimacy to the recruiting
director. Until me, the only school that Carestream recruited from was Penn State because of their well
5. known business school and prolific supply chain program. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t great
young talent at other schools. Now, Carestream is making their co-op position available to Clarkson
students and even called one of them in for an interview. When I heard that Rick, the recruitment
director, was bringing in a Clarkson student for an interview, I was just as happy as when I was informed
about mine. Being able to create a connection for my school is an amazing feeling, especially when the
only other school Carestream recruits from is Penn State. I’m opening doors for future Clarkson
students and helping bring recognition to the School of Business and the Supply Chain program. It
instills a huge sense of pride within myself for my university and makes me grateful that I’m a part of a
great institution. Providing credibility to your university is important for not only yourself, but also for
the eighteen year old kids that will start their journey at the Clarkson School of Business just like I did.
The advisors, professors and mentors I’ve had are the reason I had the confidence to apply for and get
hired at this job. It’s important to pay it forward and provide service to the university.
