Communication at Work

At work we recently had a break down in communication for a large multi facility project located in Turkey. All of the new parts were manufactured in various locations in the U.S., then shipped to Poland for final fitting and assembly, and finally shipped to the customer in Turkey. Most engineering departments did not receive the schedule until much of the design work was complete and prints were sent to the shop. In turn, parts were made and shipped out of the assembly order. This caused the small Poland facility to store huge parts it was not ready for and to scramble to meet customer deadlines for the parts they needed first. On top of that, this was a full redesign and certain assembly issues arise that need to be machined in the repair facility. The polish engineers have a hard time communicating in English so I was given the opportunity to stay out there and help communicate problems to the appropriate facility as they developed. We had some contractual delays but the overall assembly and turbine start up date have been maintained (the customer is still assembling the piping to the unit). In the end our company learned to have engineering departments communicate more freely without the “middleman” and I found an interest in overseeing whole projects rather than designing specific parts. This was the largest project for our group to date and we will be reviewing all the areas we can improve on in the future.