Ryan and I met with John Thoreson today to get a better insight of our second project scope and goal. To be honest with you, Ryan and I are still a little confused on the expectations, but we agree that he wants us to come up with a new way to predict his department's (EEE) work load either on a monthly, quarterly, or even annually basis. We also got a tour through the facility with the machines and rooms that the testing facility rooms.
The EEE (Environmental Effects Engineering) has nothing to do with being "green". Rather, this is the testing department on products before they are produced in bulk and sent out to the customers. The tests are categorized into 3 groups: Climatics, Dynamics, and Electro-Magnetic. They test these products on climatic effects like extreme temperatures and temperature change, extreme air pressures and air-pressure changes, high humidity and high corrosive situations. The dynamic tests include G-force and high impact effects on the components. The electro-magnetic tests deal with high energy blasts and continuous high-energy environmental effects on the product as well as tests on the energy and "noise" produced by the product itself so it has minimal negative influence on the other components around them.
The EEE has a very interesting business concept. The goal is to have exactly zero profit. That means the supply and demand effects go against everything I've been taught about business concept. When EEE has a busy year, they are able to drop the price of the testing (aka high demand actually produces lower prices). Conversely, when demand is low, EEE may have to raise their prices to prevent a negative bottom line. They try to avoid reducing to the labor force at all costs because they are so valuable and it is difficult to train them in this department. It is very specialized.
Ryan and I each downloaded some data mining software which is on the internet as freeware. It has proved interesting. The program will take given information and look for correlations that may not be easy to see with the naked eye. We are just getting started learning how the program works, so details will have to wait for another day.
A statement Ryan asked me at the end of the day has got me perplexed a bit. He said the program found that as the number of parts increases the time measurment actually decreases. This goes against my early instincts on the Printed Curcuit Board production data. We'll talk about it tomorrow, I'm sure.
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