This last week has been incredibly challenging at work.
(Brief History Lesson) 11 months ago my boss buys our division including the German, Japan, & California branches. He then shuts down 50% of the California production and shifts it to MD. We struggle, yet cope with the increased load. Then we begin the process of moving the rest of CA to Huntsville, Alabama. That process ended on March 31st at 5pm PST when I handed the keys to a Qiagen agent and said goodbye (am I punctual or what?).
For the last 2 months we've been looking for the first time at how our production process is achieved in MD in the DNA lab. It's chaos. Technically it's very similar to the 5 minute job I did 5 years ago the week before I quit. Yeah, there have been NO substantive improvements. Procedurally it's even worse. People can't even alphabetasise samples.
So jump to the present.
We get a ~400 plate order in. No biggie. 2 week turnaround time with special handling. Ooops.
We look at process and realise that it can't be done.
Crash effort to fix process.
24 hours later we have it in place and we test, confirm, and go live.
Today we shipped. Missed deadline by 1 day, but got half out yesterday for todays delivery.
Throughout it all my boss and our VP of production were in the lab pulling 12-18 hour shifts to make this happen.
When people ask me why I work the hours I do I tell them that I get the job done no matter what .... and I have role models to look up to.
MIB & Queen Vio ... enjoy your day off tomorrow with your family. I'll cover.
Lance