The Mini-project. The first major deliverable of your KTP project, which is a daunting thought to say the least. It’s also your first real chance to make a name for yourself within the company (So make sure you get it right!!!)
The whole point of the mini-project is to discover the wider workplace, and interact with departments which you would not normally during your day to day work. Therefore it is recommended that you and your supervisors pick something which is not related to your main project. It should represent about 2-3 days work and be something useful to the company and not just trivial tasks to keep you quiet for a week.
As with the residential modules, it will be easier for me to talk about my mini-project to illustrate the point. My mini-project brief was to carry out a feasability study looking into the possibility of changing the company’s Engineering Change Process from a paper based system to an electronic one.
This was a huge task in itself, and the sudden sinking feeling I was experiencing was not helped by my manager telling me that the company had tried and failed about 3 times in the past. But he had every confidence in me… which wasn’t as comforting as I think he had planned on it being.
So where to start with a project of this scale? Well the first port of call had to be finding out how the current system ran. This meant going to our systems administrator who took me step by step through the process. Now that I knew what the system had to include, the next step was working out how I could replicate this on a computer.
A meeting with the IT department later, and I knew that PDF files would best suit the task. So it was off to do some research into PDF packages. Once I had decided on a few programs, I ordered trial versions of each and began designing my new system. This meant a lot of consultation with various people around the company, “How would this part best work?” “What would you like to see included here?” “How would you like to see this part improved?”
After a few days of design work, I had a system which would work and answered the brief. So a meeting was set up with everyone around the company to demonstrate the new system and organise a trial. This meant more liaising with IT to give me administrator rights on every computer in the building (Ohhhh the power) in order for me to install the system on peoples computers. And so the trial began…. and within a day fell flat on it’s face.
It would seem that I had not accounted on some of the computers around the factory still being steam driven, and so they could not keep up with what the program was asking of them. So a new program had to be found, and we had a few ideas on which to use, but unfortunately the week was up and so my report was drawn up detailing yet another failure at the increasingly infamous task.
This report was then delivered in the form of a PowerPoint presentation at the 2nd KTP residential, Module 3, as I mentioned in my last post. However, all was not lost! My manager saw the worth in me spending a bit more time on the project and so I spent a bit of time each week working on it. Now we have a package that we have trialed on every-one’s computers and know to work. We have carried out trials pushing the system to it’s limits and it is still working. We are drawing the trials to a close, and then I will be able to report that I have conquered the un-conqurable!! I’m expecting at least a plaque on the wall describing my heroic achievement for future generations of workers to aspire to.
That is not the end of the saga though, I now have to try and persuade the finance director and the MD that we really do need to spend thousands of pounds on new software licenses, that we will save time and be more productive, produce less waste etc, etc.
But the mini-project has allowed me to come into contact with people and departments I would not normally work with, people know who I am, they have seen me do something of worth and so I am not just a jumped up student being paid to do…. well what exactly does he do?
Its been hard work, making me do things which I am not trained to do and don’t have a lot of confidence in. But that’s the whole point of the project, to show that you can do things like this if you ask the right people for support. That a few weeks of my time will save the company over 1000 sheets of paper a year once the system is fully implemented. It will also increase productivity around the factory. There was also a huge sense of pride when you walked past someone on a computer using the system YOU designed.
Next week: One of the most confusing things when I first applied for the job was how things were organised. There is the company wanting one thing, the university wanting another and so many people involved in the running of your project that it seemed you would just be pushed and pulled in all directions. However from my experience this is really not the case and everything works well together to give you all the support you need. So I will discuss a few occasions where everything has fallen into its place to help me with my project to hopefully put your mind at rest.
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