Week 5: Personal Contributions

This week was very interesting because I got an interesting assignment. I was ask to project the cost/benefits of moving the sterilization of our product in house, compared to our status quo of sending the product out to a contractor. This presented some interesting challenges. I had to contact a few different suppliers for cost information. Part of that included resisting pushy salesmen to get quotes. This wasn’t so easy and I certainly had to repeat myself many times, but eventually I got my message across. Once I had all of the cost information that I needed, I created formulas that would calculate variable and fixed costs. All told this took the better part of a week to get everything together and make it aesthetically pleasing. I showed it to a couple of the management staff and they were quite happy with my work. I did have to go back to make sure that all of the formulas autopopulated, but that was a good learning experience for excel. I realized everything should always autopopulate if possible. After I presented I was asked to write up something about the logistical barriers to bringing sterilization in house, which was straight forward after the research I had already done. This was one of my most rewarding weeks as far as my ability to help the company and produce meaningful work.