Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Blog 21: Independent Component 2

Literal:

(a) I, Brent Kellohen, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

(b) Mentor: Robert Kellohen

(c) Reflected in mentorship log

(d) Completed mentorship hours, delivering labels, taking calls, etc.

Interpretive:

Each day I would come into the home office and assist with answering phone calls and performing basic office duties. Two of which are data entry into the computer system and the printing of labels through a Zebra Z4X model printer. Over my 30 hours of mentorship, I had to learn how to load and unload the supplies in the printer.  This may seem rather easy at first, especially with the very clean design, but there were problems that I would run into caused by simple mistakes on the way.  In my 30 hours I have printed over 2500 labels for various different clients.

Inside label printer, had to resupply this multiple times.

The second main aspect of my mentorship was the data entry. I would have to perform data entry for over 200 entries at a time. You can already imagine how time consuming this can be–having to change line item quantities and the weights of their shipments one by one every time.

Secondary server monitor... and tissue roll.

Server (monitor currently off)

A third aspect in my mentorship was maintaining the health of the server. In the second photo,  you can see the task manager of a windows computer running in the top right hand corner showing some amount of usage. It is part of my job to ensure that it is not overloaded so that it will continue to provide service to the customers that work with us.  The second part I maintain in the server is the FTP server. Also in the second photo, there is a two identical boxes that are used to manage the FTP server and to view who or what is logging into the system.  One of my jobs here was to maintain the FTP server status and ban any hackers that occasionally try to get into our system.

Label & Ribbons Supplies

Over the 30 hours I worked, this large pile of labels and ribbon had run dry, and I was required to drive to Los Angeles and refresh the supply.  Fortunately our supplier had extras on hand.

Workstation

The last photo here is a workstation that is used to manage label designs for our clients.  The system is actually hardly used because the clients we have do not usually demand for label format changes on a day to day basis; this explains why the desk appears to be so cluttered.

Applied:

The 30 hours worked supported my first answer and in some ways, my second.

My 30 hours worked applied to my first answer in the data entry section.  The data I entered directly correlated with the need for an EDI system.  I was able to get the amount of work done that would normally require two to three days time.

The way my 30 hours supported my second answer is through the printing process.  The Zebra printer system is compatible with mainly the Windows operating system, and for that reason most of the clients I deal with use Windows. Another way to print labels is with a laser printer, but this method is not commonly used here in our office.