My third morning at Apex Tool Group centered around the other side of their business. Project management (shudders). These are scary words for the engineer in my heart, and rightfully so. Project managers have the delicate challenge of balancing the technical and pecuniary aspects of a tool-making operation.
I worked with Donna today, a project manager for various tool development teams, such as cutting and wrenches. She explained three important factors to balance in a business like ATG’s: Cost, Schedule, and Quality. While it is often easy to accomplish two of these goals, attaining all three is ideal, and she seems to manage it! Donna’s role as a project manager seems very wide reaching because she has to communicate with so many different groups: industrial design, engineering, marketing, the list goes on. She told me how she often communicated with manufacturers to identify defects in prototyped tools, or with industrial design to assist the texturing and coloring process. In balancing the three factors of a project-cost, schedule, and quality-she reached out to the various design groups to expedite their processes any way she could.
After discussing project management with Donna, Leonora and I had lunch in the courtyard, as usual.
My afternoon was spent with Zack, a packaging engineer at ATG. He showed the complicated process of designing packaging for tools in CAD. I wasn’t previously aware that packaging was such a large portion of manufacturing. However, he explained that it isn’t just designing boxes for tools, but also coordinating the production of the packaging, communicating with graphic designers about their goals for a product, and even testing packaging for strength and protection. I learned a lot about packaging today!
Zack then took me to the distribution center, the second half of the ATG facility here in Apex. It was massive! I took some photos, but I’m sure that they can’t properly convey the scale of the building. There were multiple sections, such as delivery bays and sorting conveyors; it was like an Amazon warehouse. To truly convey the scope of the facility, let me leave you with this: that warehouse on Lufkin road is the distribution center for all of North America. That means any Crescent, Lufkin, Weller, Wiss, etc. product you buy will have come through the warehouse at some point in its life.
My day at Apex Tool Group was once again amazing! Thank you to Donna and Zack for making it so informative and fun.