Hello,
My name is Jake, this is my first blog post ever. Unless you count old MySpace rantings from early teenage years. You may not care who I am yet, but I hope that after I add some content to this blog, that I warm up to you. I would just like to start off this blog with an introduction of myself. I graduated from Oregon State University with a double degree in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. The two topics are so closely related that it would have been irresponsible to not elect the double degree option. After all, the difference was about 12 credits if I remember correctly. School had pretty much been my life up until now. I had always excelled in school; in high school I was a 3.92 GPA student in International Baccalaureate (IB) coursework. Basically, IB is just a glorified AP; it has the same essential effect. I received a perfect score in IB Calculus on my way to earning sophomore status in college before I was even accepted. I am not trying to boast my intelligence. I have no illusions that I am the smartest person around. I realize I have a life long journey of learning ahead of me and I look forward to that. I attribute my success in school to my ability to adapt quickly, my good memory, and my ability to focus on my task at hand. Really, my brain was basically designed for learning so it made it easy without ever feeling like too much work. In college, I was a little more relaxed about school. I decided to live more life and I graduated with about a 3.2 GPA. I liked to think of my college experience as an optimum balance between social and academic activities. After all, they were teaching me optimization and efficiency techniques in classes, so why not apply them to life itself? All in all, I’m glad to be finished with school and out in the real world making an impact, at least as much of an impact as I can. So now you know a little bit about me, or at least me from an educational standpoint. Currently, that is all I really have.
I have just been hired as a content writer for Creative Safety Supply (CSS). It is a company that provides various lean manufacturing products, with an emphasis in 5S marking supplies. Normally, they say they hire English majors for this sort of job. I suppose they felt like having someone who is familiar with lean principles around couldn’t hurt and trusted by word of mouth that I have at least a decent writing ability. Also, the general manager is a good friend of mine so that sure didn’t hurt my odds. So I write things all day; product descriptions, articles, blog posts, you name it.
CSS is the reason I have this blog, which I find pretty exciting. They set it up for me, in fact. I had always thought a blog was an interesting idea. Therefore, the purpose of this blog will be mainly surrounding lean products, hazards, articles, etc. I may squeeze in the occasional unrelated post. The idea is that the more lean content there is, affiliated with CSS directly or not, the more benefit there is to all companies, not just CSS. I will try to post as often as daily, but it remains to be seen if I will have the time for it.
I hope this post wasn’t so boring that anyone who stumbles upon it never comes back. I will try to spice up the following posts a bit with some controversy.
-Jake