Author: peytong587

Today was the last day at Kellogg’s Cary Bakery. I quickly found the bakery to be like a new home, and I’m sad to say goodbye. The morning held only VBA coding for me: Gary’s new problem needed a solution, STAT. Thankfully enough, due to my prior project in the same file, I had the right skillset! Rick had a busy morning, being triple booked with meetings, which gave me ample time to work out a solution. The solution wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. The best thing is: the solution I delivered stood up against HOURS of attempts to break it. Gary ended up being so thankful for the two solutions I provided that he treated me to lunch; we went to my favorite spot (Chipotle) and discussed, among other things: potential colleges, life advice, schooling advantages, the state of programming languages, and his future. Having exchanged contact information, I’m looking forward to furthering our newfound friendship. Furthermore, due to VBA coding supposedly being a lucrative field (as no one uses the language anymore), I’ll be looking to work as a coding contractor when I’m 18 (assuming everything goes to plan).
Initially I supposed to shadow Okey, Seth, or Nik today; however, there’s always time in the future for that. Instead, I solidified new friendships and furthered my connection with the people who defined my Kellogg’s experience: Rick, Gary, Bobby, and Donna (sadly, Cristie was out today). I Hope to see them in the future; until then, Be Safe! Take Action!

Ms. Follet visited the plant today! While it ensured that Rick and I had a custom deck to walk her through (which we later sent to other department heads), it also put me on the clock. Ms. Follet walked along the factory floor today, seeing: mixing, forming, baking, packaging, and even a small chunk of the warehouse. I think she was thoroughly impressed by the scope of the operation (millions of food per month is daunting), and by the sheer amount of corporate policies when juxtaposed to other WEPs (many startups).

Needless to say, the truncated time trick worked: I finally fixed my VBA issue.
Gary consequently spent an hour tossing random data against my solution, even going so far as to delete the entries entirely… somehow, due to the magic of VBA that I don’t even understand, it worked with an unintended (yet PREFERRED) consequence.
Tomorrow, my last day at the plant, will be sad: I’ve come to love the job, with it fostering new interests and a new appreciation for data. While I’ve always enjoyed programming, data analytics, and industrial engineering, the business world provided me a new depth of understanding of their intermingling and the viability of my current trajectory. Leaving the finance department behind will be tough, though I’m confident in my mark remaining. Tomorrow will involve more VBA coding with a new task, as well as some new graphs to make and explain. Looking forward to another great day.

Today, the controller was in numerous meetings about the new time management system: which means, I was left alone, tasked with finishing out the excel problem. As such, I devoted the majority of the day attempting to fix the infamous issues that plague the finance department!

Needless to say, I made numerous trips to the Stack Overflow archives, as Microsoft CEASED supporting VBA in 2006… it’s an artifact of another age, and it handles like one too. Countless unexplained issues later, I’m down to the final bug: two cells won’t evaluate out to being equal (despite having the EXACT same number in them…. odd.).

I’ve also learned that (132 – 4) * 13 makes for an AWFUL number of text boxes to close out of… Thank god for exit labels. Let’s just say that outdated practices made another comeback today.

I went out to lunch with the controller; we discussed colleges, and he offered to write me a rec for the future.

The 2 o’clock went off without a hitch, and there was minimal work done today across the board; no one does any work after the boss leaves the plant (good future lesson).

All in all, not the most exciting day, though I had fun debugging more code. Hopefully, Ms. Follet and I can go to the floor tomorrow; though, it depends on HR. Y’all then.

(no pictures today.)

Today was a record-setting day: I walked three miles. Jokes aside, I spent today with Lou, the mixing specialist of the plant. We spent the day following the entire mixing process from time zero through the end of quality control (at the end of the ovens). I learned countless many metrics about Kellogg’s production, saw the workers make an unexpected line change (it even changes the recipe slightly), and learned a few top-secret secrets. Lou and I perused the flour silos, played with the dough to ensure its quality, and tasted a few Chz-ITs straight from the oven. In actuality, we spent a lot of time in the “command center,” monitoring every portion of the line. At one point, we changed the recipe of the crackers to accommodate the oven on the backup line.

Fun fact: Kellogg’s Cary plant has a blower that “blows flour so powerfully that it turns into a liquid.”

Beyond my time with Lou, I met up with Okey and discussed my plans for tomorrow: packaging. After that, it was all meetings and attempting to fix some faulty VBA code for Gary.

The meetings were an eye-opening experience for me: on one hand, I saw people in my (currently) chosen profession path (consulting), but on the other hand, I saw why middle management dislike consultants.

The office, for the first time, felt calm today; the CEO visit passed, no internal audits were going on, and most of the administration staff took the day off. However, unlike all my Cheez-IT concocting comrades, I was handed more work and projects…

The day started off with rummaging through file cabinets! The white cheddar Chz-IT project wasn’t finished, and we needed more data points; being the lowly intern, I found all the files for Gary. However, afterward, I populated a spreadsheet that calculated all the metrics we needed to complete the project; I developed a few of my own metrics and created numerous graphs, as well as explained my findings to both the controller and Gary, so the file-rummaging turned out to be worthwhile.

Beyond that: macros. Gary learned that I enjoy programming, so he’s begun to look for excel macros that don’t work quite as he expected, and I’ve been tasked with fixing them! While Visual Basic for Applications isn’t my favorite language nor my strong suit, I am excited to attempt to fix a spreadsheet that’s been giving them trouble for months (apparently no finance employees know VBA, which makes sense: VBA hasn’t been in vogue for years).

The controller’s job also felt like it shifted overnight. No longer is it accounting like on days 1 & 2, nor is it just projections, now it’s interactions with other department heads to sign documents… and saying “no” when needed.

Not too much happened today, I’ll admit, but I’m excited to see how next week shapes out! I’ll be spending time with Lou, the head mixer, on Monday!

My favorite room on-site: the Chz-IT Quality Control Room.

Tired of me using the word Excel? Too bad!
Contrary to the original plan, I went to work today, despite the CEO visit.

The day featured a plethora of Excel: I constructed graphs that went directly to department heads, determined the productivity of each line, and began solidifying upcoming fiscal projections. Beyond number-crunching, I aided in exporting SAP database files to Excel, the construction of pivot-tables, and attempted to streamline communication between department chairs. It seems as though all the hard work from the past two days has paid off and SAP is current!

More importantly, the controller tasked me with the constructing the “deck” for the CEO: the list of graphs, PPT slides, etc. that would represent the finance department. Although he already composed a few slides, we constructed numerous other financial reports to show off the plant; we, together, also built the period five scrap-map of the plant. And, we decorated three conference rooms with our new graphs! Quite the impressive day by my standards. (In the infamous words of everyone: Yay! Accounting!).

On a less significant note, I met some of the other interns. They work downstairs while I work upstairs; I doubt I’ll be spending much time with them, but I’m glad to know that I’m not the only minnow in the sea of sharks.

After lunch, instead of taking the 2 o’clock tour around the production floor, I went with Gary, the man that does a bit of just about everything (he constructs the factory’s standards, recipe changes, and manages day-to-day finances). Instead of listening to the daily foreman reports, Gary and I looked for places of potential improvement; he knows that I like Industrial Systems and Engineering, which he majored in, so we discussed the ramifications of the current plant setup and the soon-to-be-open line! He appreciated the remarks I had, and I believe we’ll flesh out some of my ideas of the next few days. Who knows, perhaps I’ll leave a more significant mark on the plant than I intended?

The final half-hour of my day consisted of sorting through file cabinets to find White Cheddar Cheez-IT mix files, and calculating the %seasoning by weight of each cracker (data found on the mix sheets) will be my first task tomorrow!

All-in-all, it was an exciting day; I’m looking forward to tomorrow, where we will tackle remaining issues with the 5+7 plan and Ruckus.

 

Today marks the end of the closing process of Kellogg. While a relief to Kellogg’s numerous administrative/financial employees, it also marks the beginning of fiscal projections! Additionally, I met a man with an Industrial Systems and Engineering Ph.D. and 20 years in the IT department who solidified my career choice.
After submitting the remaining JEs to Deepak (the Kellogg correspondent for the Cary Plant) and ensuring they were all correctly winshuttled, Rick (the plant controller) and I reviewed the current margins of favorability in the budget. From these projections, Rick and I discussed the changes needed for the 5+7 forecast we were about to begin; what happens if we changed the production standard numbers? What happens if we allot more money for plant expenses? How will depreciability affect next month’s budget allotment? Etc. This project will take until Friday to complete, as it’s diverse and multi-faceted, and will require further discussion among other team leaders.
The 2 o’clock meeting (reviewing safety procedures for various product lines and the listing of productivity/energy efficiency/etc.) allowed me to explore the factory further. Although I covered most of the ground yesterday, today allowed me to see the peanut butter fillings tanks, the Austin sandwich cracker product lines/storage areas, and I learned the top-secret recipe for a white cheddar cheez
it (yum!).
The 3 o’clock meeting introduced me to other factory controllers and allowed me to understand the insights of Kellogg’s top management and plans.
Noland, the man with the IE background, happily adopted me for thirty minutes, explaining the intricacies of his job (and his soon-to-be-delivered solutions). It confirmed my suspicion that IE is “paid problem solving for adults,” and his background jazzed me for my (hopefully) future career!
— Peyton

 

Today marks the beginning of my WEP at Kellogg and the fiscal month. As such, I began my on-the-job training with building professional accrual documents in Excel. Having helped with recording plant expenses, I’ve gained an intimate knowledge of the plant, its operations and future plans, its production lines, its top-level executives, Excel, and (most importantly) SAP. Shadowing the plant controller proved stressful in the beginning, but very rewarding at the end of the day.

After lunch, I toured the plant and saw the lines in action. The plant boasts an impressive number of workers with serious safety procedures and awe-inspiring amounts of dough-processing power — to make both snack crackers and CHEEZ ITS, of course; the plant is indeed a sight to behold with millions of lbs of  food being produced every month. Having seen both the administrative and the union-worker sides of the plant, I feel confident stepping into tomorrow. I’m excited to finish closing out the end of the month, as that’s the unglamorous side of the controller’s job; instead, I’m looking forward to the days that come: pivot tables, project projections, industrial baking and chemistry, and more journal entries.

Due to Kellogg’s corporate policy, I’m unable to take photos of the plant without explicit permission of a supervisor; that means, on a day such as today, no pictures could be taken. Lastly, I learned that the CEO of Kellogg and three executives will be touring the plant on Thursday, meaning that I’ll be hidden among the shadows.

Until tomorrow,
Peyton

(p.s. food plants have incredible amounts of hand sanitizer)