Career Episode One

Introduction
CE1.1 I worked at Superpipe international coordination office in Tehran from June 26th
2004-January 13th 2005 as a trainee engineer in the production department. The
department is responsible for production planning and R&D. The organization
structure chart is provided in Figure1, my position is also highlighted.

Background
CE1.2 Superpipe International is the pioneer in multi-layer pipes production in Iran. The
company is the Uponor licensee which is the market leader in the industry in Germany.
All the production machineries, raw material, production technology, and plans are
provided by the German company. The head office and the factory are located in
Qeshm free-trade zone and the coordination office is in Tehran.

COE Managers

Accounting

Production

Quality

Trade &
Marketing

Control

R&D / Senior

Production Planning and

Mechanical Engineer

Material Handling/Senior
Industrial Engineer

IT

Human Resource

Maintenance/
Senior Mechanical Engineer

MyPositionasa
TraineeEngineer

Figure.1

CE1.3 I was given two projects to work on. The first one was to evaluate the companys
suppliers. The Company had recognized its procedural weakness in choosing and
grading new suppliers. Needless to say, the grading of the existing suppliers had never

Career Episode One

taken place either. I was provided with two methods for evaluating suppliers. My task
was to review the information on each supplier and present a systematic method that
would give fair and clear grade to the supplier. Therefore, management could decide
which supplier was best suited for a given contract using the grading system.
CE1.4 Second project handed to me was Technical Information Archive. I was
required to create an information system for technical documents. Due to the
inefficiency of managing information circulation, it caused a lot of duplication tasks and
was time consuming.

Personal Engineering Activity

CE1.5 For the first project, I started literature survey which belonged to two large car
companies, Iran khodro and SAIPA. They are the two largest car manufacturers in the
Middle-East with manufacturing capacity of more than 1,500,000 motor vehicles a year.
The car companies production lines are not only extremely sensitive to supply delays
but also each car is made up of thousands of parts. Consequently, their evaluation
system is rigid, sophisticated, and very costly. They resembled nothing like the
Company I worked for. My Company only needed to supply simple metal connectors. I
had to think about more simple and practical methods rather than those employed by
the large car companies. The following paragraphs sets out my approach to the issue
and my final scheme that I proposed to the managers.
CE1.6 First of all I tried to define some important objectives in this project. Therefore, I
divided the project into three parts as follows:
1. Identifying the characteristics that can be important to evaluate a suppliers
relations with my company and prepare a final list of characteristics;
2. Allocating a weighting to each item;

Career Episode One

3. Writing an instruction for whole auditing process to guarantee that the final
result would not be a personal judgment.
CE1.7 The first step was to make a list of characteristics that would be important in
choosing a supplier. To help with the process, I decided to send a short survey to the
personnel who were contact with suppliers in the following three departments:
production, quality control, and procurement. In the survey personnel were asked the
following question: Please, name at least five characteristics which you think are
important in an ideal supplier. For instance, would you think an ideal supplier should
be on time? Also, for every suggestion, mention how you would examine it. The
survey was conducted to receive feedback from the personnel about the suppliers,
which would help to meet the requirements of the suppliers. After all the surveys were
collected, I tried to improve or create new ideas from the feedback I received. My next
approach was to make a list of characteristics that was sent back to the same people
surveyed. This time they had to grade each characteristics from 1-10, 10 was for most
important characteristic. The list included almost 20 characteristics, covering the
requirements for the new and existing suppliers, such as:

-location of supplier

-supplier

should

have

maintenance

department
-supplier should have separate quality -how old are suppliers machineries
control section
-Supplier with ISO9000 or ISO9001

-Capacity of manufacturing

-Flexibility to supply urgent order

-Recommendation
contractor

letter

from

previous

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-Has the supplier have any rejected - How many connector have been supplied
batch(for existence supplier)

CE1.8 Next I finalized the characteristics list, which was given a weighted average
based on the survey. I also created a check list for the auditor of the supplier. I reviewed
the list and the weightings that I had given to each characteristic with the production
manager. We discussed the proposal and the edited proposal was sent to the CEO for
final the approval. The approved list and weightings were handed back to me and I was
ready to carry on to the final and most important phase of the project.
CE1.9 I needed to design the whole process and I set some objectives to achieve
optimum results. Firstly, I created a process that would take place in two situations;
new supplier assessment or a periodic assessment of existing supplier. Following the
initial assessment, the data of the supplier was to be updated annually. Also, an urgent
assessment would take place if it is asked for by any department which provides
reasons. For instance, revaluating would take place and change the supplier grade if
Quality Control (QC) reports showed a decline in the quality of work received from a
supplier. For an urgent or new supplier assessment, an inspector was to visit the
supplier to observe suppliers workshop. Their task was to assess the suppliers
workshop, ask the necessary questions, and grade the supplier based on the provided
instructions in the checklist. Similarly, periodical reassessment of suppliers data was
undertaken annually to maintain everyones record. Thus, periodical reassessment was
based on internal information reports from related departments about the supplier. I
also recommended that inspection be conducted by two inspectors separately to
enhance the objectivity of the assessment in the case of new suppliers.
CE1.10 After designing the process, I created the final checklist. It included a cover page
or inspection details, suppliers details, criteria for assessing suppliers, which was also
4

Career Episode One

graded from 1 to 10 by the auditing inspector. For illustration, the section I designed for
workshop environment was as follows:

Workshop environment
Standard

Acceptable

Not-

max point 2

max point 1

acceptable

Staff uniform and workshop safety condition

Workshop lights

Workshop ventilation

Machineries condition

Material flow and machineries lay-out

It was important that the inspector assessed each and every aspect of supplier in detail,
as it was important in the context to which main characteristic was chosen. To unify
different inspectors judgment, I defined standard, acceptable, or not-acceptable for
each context, only if they were applicable. However, I did not design the whole list
based on the same grading system. For example in the case of education I designed the
section as follows:

Education & Experience

Degree

Plan and machinery operators have related vocational ( ) / 1*

Training

experience

Certificate

>5 yrs

( )/4

( ) / 100%

( )/1

( ) / 100%

training or certificate.
Managers have a degree or long term experience in the ( ) / 4
related field.

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QC personnel have related education background or ( ) / 3

( )/2

( ) / 100%

( )/3

( ) / 100%

training certificate.
Maintenance personnel have related degree, training, ( ) / 2
certificate, or long term experience.
Note: *maximum point

In the instructions, I explained how each item should be graded.

CE1.11 After an inspection, all the assessed grades are entered to a spread sheet that I
designed in Excel. The spread sheet applied all the weightings that converted to figures
and automatically calculated the suppliers grade. 80 Points or more were classified as
grade A, 60-80 points were graded B and 50-60 points were graded as C.
CE1.12 For the second project I had to create an information system for technical
documents such as, plans, standards, technical reports, resource books. My former
experience helped me to complete the second project much more efficiently and in a
shorter time period. At first I identified all documents required to be used in the
system. Next was to design the system. I classified the documents by type, not subject.
For example, computer files, CDs, plans, books, journals, and catalogues. I also
suggested some new sections in the organization chart. Subsequently, a new position
was created where a person was responsible for lending the technical documents. The
whole concept was created as a mini-library. I designed and defined the whole process
as such, that people could apply for technical information or to borrow documents.
Furthermore, with my managers approval I set levels of access to documents as well.
CE1.13 The final step involved designing a database using Ms Access. The database
helped personnel to search for information which is available easily. If they could not
find a document that they needed, they could fill a request form and ask the person in
charge to supply it. Also, the software helped staff working in the technical library to

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find the documents which were coded by their types and tracking the documents that
were borrowed. I enlisted the help of the IT staff, to secure the database by defining
staff access. They also devised a search engine for the database that allowed conducting
a search within the database more efficiently. As a result the whole process of document
enquiry was taken online. Each employee was assigned a username and password
giving them access to information they required within their access level.

Summary
CE1.14 Upon completion of the first project, the Production Manager presented it to the
board of directors and they approved it for implementation. That was my first practical
project that I completed after starting the university study. My methodical approach to
the problem helped me apply some of my knowledge in a manufacturing environment
to create an assessment system to provide an important tool to help managers make
better decisions.
CE1.15 The second project scheme suggested new sections in the company, defined
tasks and responsibilities for the new section, also including whole forms and
documentations, and instruction for software. The whole experience in Superpipe
International provided me with greater understanding of a professional environment
also improved my ability to utilize a systems approach to problems and to design an
operational performance. The two successful projects show my professional abilities to
deal with practical problems and also my ability to introduce an efficient information
system for an organization such as Superpipe International.