Internship-Week 6:Wednesday

Once upon a time in PTM history, the management strike a bold plan to end the plight of insufficient manpower especially in the production area. This leads to a situation whereby every personnel ranked above technicians onward in the company hierarchy is decreed to join the production field to offer their services and at least 1 day in a month period. The designated production area is rotated, but I am still bidding my time to catch a glimpse of a high-ranking officer preferably Managing Director (MD) level taking on the role of an ordinary operator. An old acquaintance of mine from the session yesterday breaks it out to me as I spotted him in the HBD production area. He dubbed it 'national service' though I thought that "company service" is a much more fitting term. However, personally I still think the management should come up with a more viable plan to solve apparent manpower shortages once and for all.

Internship-Week 6:Tuesday

It's training day again! I like it for many reasons, but if you ask me which is the most dominant reason of all, I'll tell you with a glee it's "free food and beverages". Okay. Cut to the point. The training is actually on the topic Environment, Health & Safety aka EHS conducted by the one and only certified Safety & Health Officer (SHO), Ms. Rosmiza. In this matter, we, participants including me are 6 in total, start off by being informed of 2 ISO that the company is abiding namely OHSAS 18001:2007 and ISO 14001:2004. As a matter of fact, the company even set up an Environment, Health & Safety Management System (EMS) for the purpose of environment image enhancement, potential cost saving and the beneficiaries-employees all. Under OHSAS 18001, there's HIRARC-Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment & Risk Control while under ISO 1400 there's EIA for Environmental Impact & Aspect. For HIRARC, we need to learn to identify the source(s) of hazard and its risk stands for likelihood of occurrence and severity of consequence. For EIA, aspect refers to how a task is related to environment while impact refers to effect on the environment.

After the break at 10am, the session resumes with briefing on how to handle oneself for example when there is a fire outbreak or accident occurs, next is some basic fire fighting 101 and instructions on how to use a spill kit available in the company. What amazes me the most is the depth of the speaker's expertise as she recounts some of the worst accidents in her odd years as SHO. She even corrected me at one point when I am asked to present my action in front of others in times of an accident. It's like this, I suggested reducing blood loss by applying pressure on the wrist when a colleague's finger is caught in an accident. However, from her experience, this method is not effective and inexperience handling will cause permanent damage to the victim as blood is stopped for too long. So, the speaker suggested another viable alternative which is to keep the injured part, ie finger above the level of the heart. Moving on, there are some documents that are important in ensuring employee safety and one of them is Material Safety Data sheet (MSDS). Provided by the manufacturer, this will provide comprehensive information from product content to handling and more. Meanwhile, the hierarchy for risk control from descending order of priority-eliminate, replace, engineering control & Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Following global outcry, the company's management also complies with Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) in their products such as lead and mercury. Last but not least, once again another written exam as the session ends at exactly 4pm. This brings back memories but unfortunately not very pleasant ones on exam, still hey who's complaining when you can get a free meal in a day. Hehe.

Internship-Week 5:Wednesday

Insider gossip-technician style. In this case, the gossip is all about assembly machine but the point is how the technician going about it. Well, you see there is this one particular notebook that I was shown whereby all technician from different shifts at the assembly shared. Basically, any error that is corrected pending more test from middle inspection or error yet to be rectified when the particular technician's shift ended are all recorded. This is due to the fact that those technician din't have a chance to meet face to face. For example, the normal shift ends at 1700 hour but technician on the night shift checks in at 1900 hours, With this notebook, all technician are well informed and aware of tasks that needed immediate attention. However, usually technician on other shift than normal shift works OT meaning its 7-7 either 7pm to 7am or the other way around. Message are sometimes passed by the technician on night shift through operator who checks in on the first shift of the day at 0700 hours. Regardless of the method, the technician needs their rest after tiring shift and may not be available for contact for some time. Hence, "check your notebook, lemme sleep", they mouthed in their dreams, lol~

Internship-Week 5:Tuesday

After an enlightening experience from the middle inspection, I find myself frequenting the otherwise quite secluded corner of the assembly area. Since I am familiar with the tensile testing, that's why I noticed immediately that something is off and my intuition pay off. What resembles the tensile test is actually a bonding test progress, the equipment is the same but with slight modification to suit the purpose. Instead of 2 adjustable jaws, the bottom is replaced with a platform that will act to secure the product while the top has a protruding cylinder. Then, the protruding cylinder will move downwards and stretches the TPE, testing whether the bonding strength of the TPE will prevail over the amount of force applied. After that, I realized though all these products are results from the same mould and process but strength may differ a lot from one to another which makes this test a necessisity.

Internship-Week 5:Monday

Today, sick of being waiting to be educated like Malaysia's education system, I decided to take the task into my own hands and of course the destination-middle inspection section. Who is a better teacher material candidate none other than the middle inspection head herself. As i watched, she deftly completed a tensile test on the welding of the hybrid damper with practiced hand. First, she cut the bottom of the hontai made of TPE (only the top are welded together) and removed the grease contents within. Next, she uses a soldering tool to create 3 holes, one at the top and 2 at the side below the weld located exactly opposite of each other on an imaginary horizontal axis. Then, she drive what looks like a long thumbtack with the pointed edge going through the top hole from the bottom and a metal rod is inserted into the other 2. After that, the product is secured at the rod on the lower jaw that stays stationary while the upper jaw secures the edge of the thumbtack and moves upwards in the test. Hence, if the welding is stronger than the applied force then the hontai structure will yield whereas vice-versa the cover (futa) and hontai will be separated. In short, this test is just one of the many hourly test that the middle inspection conducts on finished products. This is to ensure no NG overflow to the customers. Other than that, NG products are also expelled through jigging in which a metal/plastic mould with a gap for height tolerances for that particular product will be used. There are 2 possible manual rejection scenarios, can't fit-height is over & pass through-height too low. Well, there are still several test and mechanism that I didn't managed to grasp at the moment which I intend to master if given the chance.

Internship-Week 4:Friday

Last working day of the month and it's payday! A common scene: each operator with a payslip in one hand and a calculating device in another, furiously totaling OT clocked to prevent well deserved pay from going missing. Well, there are mixed expressions about but one thing for sure, the month of April is officially over~

Internship-Week 4:Thursday

Finally, landed myself a big role on the sideline. This time, I need to plan and create a machine maintenance schedule from May 2010 onwards for the year of 2010. In simpler words, there are 7 maintenance tasks for which 4 of them are carried on more regular basis and I need to arrange it so that no assembly line has a maintenance task overlooked. These combination of preventive and predictive measurements will ensure the assembly line optimum operating environment with less likelihood of breakdowns

Internship-Week 4:Wednesday

What should have been a totally uneventful day turns out to be the exact opposite. Judging from everyone's appearance around me, some wore puzzled expressions while some are undisturbed ( experienced it before, I concluded) and clueless one (no plural because that's just me). By the time the shrill siren grabs everyone's attention, the assembly head calmly ordered all employee to evacuate the vicinity. Somebody even took the liberty and moved blocking objects to reveal an emergency exit door that leads directly to the outer compound which I swear will easily gone unnoticed. However, the fire drill simulation ended with the absence of authority to address the crowd which subsequently disperse as quickly as the crowd gathers. A fake alarm of sort that just added a tiny fleck of flavor to my day, honestly it din't even crossed my mind to take some pictures until much later.

Internship-Week 4:Tuesday

Class post phoned to 2pm, however that fails to dampen my eager spirit. So off with a handbook entitled " Quality Campaign 2010-Say NO to NG...... YES To Quality!" that I managed to borrow, as the cover suggests the content is all comic-like and tries to instill the right attitude and mindset while keeping a light tone with a tinge of humor (not very professionally done but hey we are talking about 2 common employee and not a manga artist).

Nowadays, the conflict in manufacturing companies is always fought over quality and profit, one of the purpose of the speaker is to explain the current company standing and further reinforced the company's policy. Hence, the session is kick started with a Hansei (review) on the company 2010 1st Quarter. After that, the speaker discussed some of PTM known weaknesses which brought about Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) including lost of customer's goodwill and expenses to rectify these mistakes. The session which lasted only 3 hours stresses on Manufacturing Quality (MQ), Quality Management System (QMS), Quality Document Control and lastly employee training. At the end of the session, a test is conducted to gauge knowledge obtained by each individual and also used as a platform to determine subsequent raise that the employee deserves.

Internship-Week 4:Monday

A technician resigned and a new one came to fill up his position, for once I can act all senior-ly as I show him some of the ropes that I've managed to grasp so far. The highlight of the day is nevertheless when I was informed that I've been enrolled in a Quality Awareness session from 9am-5pm the next day. I am not fond of too many classes, but this type of employee's training might just prove to be another eye opening experience