Taylor N. Lacey: engineering

Personal Business Cards and Why You Should Get Some!

A personal business card is one of the items that I always carry with me. While a work business card is a great thing to have when visiting customers, suppliers, or potential business partners, a personal business card is something that I use during local networking events, random conversations at coffee shops, or volunteer fairs. I keep them in either a cute pink business card case or inside my wallet.

I ordered my cards on Zazzle, which is a great website with a ton of cool modern designs and relatively frequent promotions. When I purchased my cards, they had a 50% business cards sale so check in frequently on the site of your choice to minimize cost for the maximum number of cards. I paid around $11 for 100 cards including shipping.

I chose one of the preset designs and configured it to meet my needs. The front of the card states my name and my tagline. Words make for a cleaner tagline than phrases or sentences about your abilities. Keeping the number of words in your tagline low allows it to be more impactful. I chose the following:

Engineer - I am an advocate for women + minorities in STEM and proud of my engineering degree.
Volunteer - I volunteer for various social causes and would love to get involved in more.
Learner - I love to learn and connect with people who are willing to teach me something new.

Using these three words as my tagline has been a nice conversation starter/closer with new contacts at events as we discuss how you can boil your life down into as few words as possible.

My personal card has three things on the back:

my website to demonstrate some of my work outside of my profession
my email which is a link to me in a more formal way
my cell phone number which is a link to me in an informal way

While some experts say that you should add a picture, I felt that linking my website allows someone to see my face again if they find that necessary. Social media handles can be included if that is more applicable to your work but in general, my volunteer work contacts need a phone number to call for help and an email to send confirmation details after the conversation. Whatever choices you add to your design, make sure you spellcheck before saving the final design and paying for the cards!

Other creative ways to use personal business cards that I have heard or read about are:

Address cards after people have moved to share info quick with friends or family
Cards with your children's ages and relevant allergy information for play dates
Photography business cards with examples of your work on one side

business cards

Personal Business Cards and Why You Should Get Some!

automotive

What does an Automotive Quality Engineer Do?

This post is long overdue and I am so happy to share my thoughts about my rotational program experience as I have been on program for over 2.5 years! Originally, it was supposed to be 2 years but with some detours, I finally made it to the end and it really has be such an adventure. Let's get started!

Always twinning with Amanda!

Rotation 1:

I started my rotational program out in Salem, Indiana, one of our largest facilities and it was a blast. Amanda, my manager and seen in the photo above, really allowed me to learn our business from everyone in the plant and taught me the quality building blocks for many of the things I use today! While in this rotation, she let me sit on on customer visits, take multiple automotive classes in Michigan, and work on some projects on the shop floor. My BBF at work, Debbie, also taught me many tricks to the trade in regards to documentation and TS 16949 and did lots of fun fitness activities with me like getting bouncy ball chairs to sit on at work. It's overwhelming to learn about PM but using statistics, everyone's gracious help, and exploring, I got a pretty good base knowledge while at this plant. Everyone here was so kind to me and whenever I get to go back, it is a joy!

Achieved: Purdue MEP Six Sigma Black Belt, AIAG Classes on FMEA, APQP, PPAP, and a basic knowledge of how the automotive industry works as a supplier!

Mentor Notes: Amanda is one of the most wonderful people I've met at my company. She really took me under her wing and taught me many things about our company and the industry. I am really grateful for everything she's taught me but my one takeaway that I remember everyday is that you can be firm and nice at the same time. Being a woman in this industry takes guts but you don't have to sacrifice who you are to get ahead.

I have passed my selfie crown to Mary now - she is a pro!

Rotation 2:

My next rotation was in Emporium, PA under Mary Culver, a super rad woman who is in charge of everything quality document and system related in the US division. Under her, I worked on one main project of really understanding how our quality software can be used to improve production from the engineering side of things. I learned about new features in the software, wrote them ups for the user base, and tried to implement all the new features on the floor in a sample in the site. I had a few other small projects but all of them related to quality. During this rotation, I had my first conflict in moving things forward and while it was very rough for me at the time, I learned a lot from that experience. Mary also gave me great advice on this and I am really grateful for all of her wisdom shared with me during this rotation.

Achieved: A greater understanding of quality systems, how to implement better quality control for the operators and how to handle conflict and reluctance to change in others

Mentor Notes: Mary is someone who handles everything with such grace and a smile. I always enjoy her positive attitude and how it forced me to see the positive in all situations. When I asked her about how to handle this conflict at work, she told me that seeing both sides of the situation is key, meeting the person halfway and getting them calm, and then trying to get them to come to your side by seeing the benefits. If your side is a mandate from corporate, it may have to be that the person must change but make the change not hurtful because they see a benefit on their side! She calls this "WHIFM" - what is in it for me!

Captured in our favorite place - a machine that always gave us some troubles!

Rotation 3:

My third rotation was in Conover. NC and this was probably my most floor-intensive rotation. When I had gotten the plant, they were in a bit of a pickle. I learned quickly how to test and measure all types of parts, create standard work for measuring processes, analyze data in Minitab, help support a new product being launched, and support the operators in their requests. I also implemented some semi-digital processes to help bring the plant into Industry 4.0 until our company wide measures are implemented. My boss Earl is one of the most interesting quality managers I've ever worked under and I learned A LOT from him during this rotation. He handled most of the calls with the customers for our team so the engineers in the plant had time to go out to the floor and solve issues. One of my fondest memories is when I did an experiment on different pan types and had to strength test 500 parts in one day. It was really interesting to see the results of an experiment that I had run and learn how to graph/present them for the audience to understand the impact of the the findings.

Achieved: In-depth metrology understanding, how to create documentation for the shop floor, and how to design an experiment, conduct multiple experiments at the same time, and visualize all of the data

Mentor Notes: Earl was my first male manager during program and his straight forward leadership style was very different than what I was used to from my previous rotations. I had to learn how to condense my achievements for the day into a 3 minute summary, take notes on the fly, and keep tabs on all the balls in the air so to speak. Earl is also gifted with the art of presentation. He is a great public speaker and presenter. There are three things I learned about presenting from him: always project loudly and clearly, prepare slides with minimal words to keep the focus on you and your message, and always give the audience something to remember at the end like dollar coins for questions about the presentations.

Boss#1: Christina

Rotation 4:

Rotation 4 in Bruneck, Italy has been my most challenging rotation as I really had to learn a lot in a short time to deliver results for my two (!) managers. For Christina, I learned how to write SQL and define queries ultimately for a dashboard. For Christian, I am working on two projects in the plant to help with some efficiency. It's been a lot of desk time for me which is unusual but I can see why desk jobs are appealing! I was able to wear a skirt to work for the first time in a long time and caffeine became my best friend. Coding is not simple - sometimes the SQL query works but then you must validate it against known data to make sure that you are getting the right data out of the database. Besides being a more desk-centric rotation, I was in a for a bit of shock with German being the mother tongue in the plant and all of the new pilots going on in this plant!

Achieved: SQL knowledge, automotive terms in german, basic Italian and German, and an understanding of using big data to make decisions

Mentor Notes: Having two bosses was interesting and each had some things that I learned from them. Both of my bosses are numbers focused. They make decisions based on data analysis and their understanding of our processes. Christina is really good with understanding all function views of a subject. When developing a dashboard together, she asked me to think from the production, upper management, and quality's point of view to create a comprehensive view of the topic. Christian is really good at explain things in a simple way - whenever he explained something to me, I fully understood it without him repeating himself. I have a long way to go to emulate him as I like to give every detail (if you could not tell already) but brief technical statements that are fully comprehendible are a goal of mine now.

Side Project: RocketSpace/Smart Quality

I was really lucky during my program to go to San Francisco to learn about startup culture to bring it back to our company in the social media group I created for us and in the plants where I am stationed.

Side Project: Industry 4.0

Our company takes Industry 4.0 very seriously and thus we have done a serious of projects to implement it effectively and this has been so cool to be a part of and learn about the topic.

This program got me into hiking for exercise - I went hiking in Cinque Terre and can't wait to do it more in the US!

Overall:

This program has given me such a great opportunity to learn about the automotive industry, especially the quality sector. I did not know that there was so much involved in cars to make sure that they are safe for us to drive everyday or how many people are making sure that quality is excellent everyday. There are over 2,000 different parts in a car and all need to be regulated for our safety.

Generally, I really learned how important it is to understand information and how it is used or perceived at different levels of an organization. In regards to data, I am just in the beginning stages of my data science and data visualization journey but it is so important to use data, analyze data, validate data, and figure out what you aren't collecting.

Personally, I've really grown as a person and become an 'real' adult and while that sounds silly to write, it's so true. I've been in all kinds of situations at work, moved to four different places with little to no friends there and gained a group of people I still contact, and learned what is truly important to me - my health, my family, and enjoying what I spend at least 25% of my week doing.

engineer

Post Rotational Program: What I Learned

engineering

Moving to Milwaukee

Typical American Work Outfit

Something that is so interesting to me is work style. Working in manufacturing, we tend to dress to get dirty and not to look so nice. Here in Bruneck, the culture is a bit different and yet the same as the US plants I know and love. In the US, I posted about this before but I tend to dress casual in my day to day life and dress up a bit when we have a customer or visitors in the plant. I go with dressy bottoms and casual tops with the option to throw on a company branded cardigan or button-down if a surprise visitor comes to the plant. Here in Europe, there are three distinct differences from America when it comes to work style.

1. People will wear the same clothes two or three times in a week.

The first time that I saw this, I was surprised. A man who I worked with wore the same outfit two days in a row. At first, I thought maybe he doesn't have a lot of work clothing or he didn't have time to do laundry for the week. One of my friends here informed me that it is nice to wear the same clothes if they are not sweaty because it is more environmentally friendly and laundry here is expensive. Another coworker informed me that for clothing that you wear to work, it is better to buy something high quality and wear it a lot than to buy something low quality and have to replace it more often. If I buy three really nice work outfits for the season that can be mixed and matched, this is much better than to buy 5 or 6 low quality outfits.

2. People tend to dress very casual unless there is a customer or a big meeting.

It is very common to see guys wearing t-shirts and jeans with sneakers to work. The women tend to wear blouses, jeans, and cute shoes. One thing I like about the casual clothing style here is that it fits everyone very well - the pants are the perfect length, t-shirts are wrinkle free and fitted, and the shoes are in very good condition. If there is a customer in, the men tend to wear a button-down shirt, nice tailored pants, and nice shoes with a matching belt. The women tend to wear skirts or something similar to the men. Overall, it's very fashionable.

3. Individual style is appreciated.

One thing that I love about here is that you wear what you want and no one is really judging you for your outfit. For example, some of the women and I are wearing skirts though we go on the floor. I have some nice steel-toed loafers that go with many of my dress and even if it is different for people, they say nothing about it in a negative way. In the US, I would never wear a skirt on the floor because people would be judging me in some way. It is also nice for the men - for example, the shipping manager always wears all black and everyone embraces his style with open arms.

Overall, I love how they dress in our company's typical manufacturing setting more in this plant than in the US. I plan to take all of these cool style practices and slowly implement them into the plants in the US. I truly believe that when you can dress in a way that makes you happy, you are much more productive at work and in a much better mood!

engineer

European and American Work Style

Before moving to this rotation in Bruneck, I went to San Francisco and blogged about the impact that I had on me as a person. During my time there, I realized that I needed to learn how to code and integrate coding into my daily work life so that I would not lose the skill. This worked out really perfectly for me timing wise because working in a company that prioritizes Industry 4.0, we are all about learning from the massive amount of data that we collected on a daily basis to improve our efficiency. Using the data to make meaningful statistical analysis is something I do in my daily life but to cleanse data for use in data science applications or in dashboard making is a new skill for me!

My friend Thomas had told me about Code School website and how it taught you to code using examples. The basic format is a video, a quiz, and then an example lesson that progresses in difficulty. There are usually three levels for the course and each level teaches you something new while building on what you learned before. I really enjoy how much fun they put into the lessons - for example - Mondo DB was all about owning a potions shop and how to create a database for a potion store. I did the all of the levels of anything database related in the first month of being in my new rotation but it was not too time consuming and actually a ton of fun!

I took the free levels of Python, SQL, and MondoDB and got hooked! I love how I learn something on the website and then try something in our database at work. Now, as part of my project, I am working on our first data lake and writing queries to answer the questions of production, quality and the management team. While tough sometimes, coding in SQL to get a specific answer to a question is a fun way to understand the information that we are collecting and what we might need more of in the future. I am learning so much through my mistakes and encouraged my boss to get into SQL as well. It's been really fun to pick her brain about the best way to do things in SQL to answer a question. Overall, if you have some free time and would like to give your brain a challenge, check this awesome website out!

(No, this is not sponsored - I just really love this website but wait until they have a 50% sale to get the unlimited package for the year - it's better for your wallet!)

codeschool

Learning SQL Via Code School

engineering

One Sentence Blog Posts: Two Year in The Work Force

Finished this glittery beauty today. It finally feels real that I am graduating 😭 #psugrad

A post shared by Taylor Lacey (@taylornlacey) on May 7, 2015 at 3:29pm PDT

At almost two years post college graduation, I wanted to share three things that I've learned working in the real world.

1. The biggest thing that you can do to further others in life is to give your time and mentor others. I have had the greatest mentors in life - whether it was women older than me in school or executives I've met at work. All of these people give me great advice and teach me skills to further my life in the work place. My work mentor just taught me the best ways to do conflict management and one of my mentors and friends taught me all about STEM outreach. For me, I give my time to the Girl Scouts, NSBE, or whatever organization can use my skill set to further advance its members. Sometimes it is an early Saturday morning or an after school activity, but you will never regret spending the time to help others get a foot in the door or in STEM.

2. Figure out your post graduate style. I know when I got out of school, I was not sure what kind of clothes that I needed for work. I work in manufacturing so I generally dress pretty casual but when we have a customer or corporate in the plant, I dress business casual and when I have work functions or recruiting, I dress formal. I bought so many things that I have given to Goodwill but I have finally found what I would say is my work style. I wear a lot of dressier pants and wear a shirt that fits the occasion. What works for you and makes you happy is what you should wear to work and in life.

3. Network, network, network. All of college we spend meeting new people in clubs, at parties, and in class. There are a ton of people that you have connected with in life. I try to connect with anyone I know at the same conference or the city I am traveling to currently. I try to see all of my best friends once a year and my family as much as possible. I am such a huge advocate of keeping relationships alive but I also realize that sometimes you have to exfoliate those toxic friends or negative people from your network so that you can meet new people. If you can find balance between these two things, you will basically win at life.

college