Last Saturday was the HOG Chapter Christmas party. The venue, as usual was lovely and I got there early enough to get pictures of the view out the back windows.
Part of the festivities is the awards for various reasons. I was shocked to get the Die Hard Award. There is a story there, but I won't get into it - just suffice to say, no, I never even met Ray Hamel, so the name is in memory of a person and some of the stuff he went thru.
Had a great time and I left when the dancing started up (as usual).
The week before Thanksgiving I attended the first week of Green Belt training thru one of our customers. This last week, I attended the 2nd week of training. BTW - Please no comments on where the training was done - (CC - you know what I mean).
We had a group project thru the week which involved making "helicopters" out of paper. The hellicopters had to follow a standard template and the only modifications that could be made were by folding and use of paperclips. Out of the 4 teams, my group came in 1st. There were several things that were scored; there was a 10 minute presentation featuring stats and use of Minitab for the project, The team had to build and test 10 identical helicopters in 5 minutes, testing consisted of the requirement that each fly for at least 1 second from a height of 65", then the teams got to pick 5 of their 'copters to compte for flight time and lowest Standard Deviation between the 5.
After the presentation, my team was in 2nd place. Then we made up points during the build because each was identical to the others (seriously, I figured that would be a given for teams, but apparently not). We had a very tight Standard Deviation for our 5 competition flights, which was followed closely by another team. We also slightly beat out another team for longest flight at 1.89 seconds. We did not hit our 95% confidence level for flight time, but none of the other teams did so either, so when all was said and done, our team squeaked by with 1/10th of a point. Each team member received the following prize
Hey, and the first week we had a team competition also. first, each person took a survival quiz. Without scoring or knowing answers, we then broke into our groups (totally different groups than week 2) and then took the survival quiz as a group. Once the scoring was done, I had the lowest score in the class (lower is better - my score was 40), and my team had the lowest team score by about 10 points at 50. This despite the fact that our team also had 2 of the highest individual scores at 78 & 80. So I was able to influence the team enough to lower the score significantly.
Lets see, two team competitions where the only common denominator was me - cause and effect perhaps :D [/JK]
Well done, well done, and your teams were lucky to have you! BTW: I knew so little about your venture that I was thinking karate rather than 6Σ. You can tell that I've been retired for a day or two, can't you? (When given the "opportunity" to train, I passed. Hope you are enjoying it.)
Posted by: Cop Car | December 08, 2018 at 10:09 PM
P.S. I'm jealous of your quadcopter!
Posted by: Cop Car | December 08, 2018 at 10:11 PM
On volunteering for training - I was Voluntold I was taking the training. My boss would not let me decline. Another person at work was also told he would be present.
My boss told me that I cannot say "No" to whatever he wants me to do work wise. Even when put as a "request", he ends with, "Say yes." You do what you gotta do to keep the boss happy in such circumstances.
Posted by: bogie | December 09, 2018 at 06:28 AM
I'll have to wait until summer to play with the quad copter. The kittens would destroy it along with half the house trying to get to it. I've never flown/operated such a thing, so I'm sure I would crash into stuff even if I put the kittens in the pen.
Posted by: bogie | December 09, 2018 at 06:30 AM
That's the difference between your job and situation and mine. By the time 6Σ became the "in" thing, I had gone through at least 3 or 4 iterations of QC programs and I wasn't thinking of being upwardly mobile. I did sponsor at least one project and participated in a couple, and I took some 6Σ training at Friends U; but, I did not volunteer for Green Belt and was not forced to do so. Sherry Deiter became a Green Belt, as I recall, and (of course) some of the QC/QA/Reliability engineers (perhaps, all of them, but I don't recall).
Yes, most bosses are pretty good at letting people know when something is a requirement. In addition, one of my bosses never told me "no" when I said I wanted to go do something (work on a different airplane line or lead the repair team, on which I had been told that I should decide how much I wanted to be involved); but, he did tell me to go think about it and let him know my decision. A few iterations of that, and I accepted his message!
In the case of the repair team, my bosses boss supposedly had something else he had decided I should do. What that "something" was never became apparent to me.
Posted by: Cop Car | December 09, 2018 at 06:54 AM
Well, I do know "boss's boss". Evidently, auto-correct did not. Grrrr.
Posted by: Cop Car | December 09, 2018 at 06:56 AM