Week Update - From 07/11 to 07/15

At the beginning of the week, we finished the preparations for the InterSolar North America Conference 2016 in San Francisco. On Tuesday we went to San Francisco to attend the conference,  where we had the opportunity of understanding a little more about solar energy, expend our network, find pontential sponsors and also present a little bit of the work that is being done here in the Spartan Superway facility (this part was presented in a different location, on a hotel).

In order to increase the number of companies known, we divided our team in subgroups. My subgroup was responsible for the 3rd floor. We  talk to representatives from companies like Runsol, Harensolar, and Japan Solar, and we discussed about our project and how the work of the company could be part of it.

In the rest of the week we continued our activities: I continued to construct the safe plan for the shop, included on the blueprint where the fire extinguishers and medical kits should be placed, finished the design of the risk map, mad an inventory of our current first aid supplies and what do we have to procure, checked the current portable fire extinguishers existing on the shop and how much we should acquire, and looked for signages for the harzards in each areas.

Week From 07/04 to 07/08

For this week, we kept doing some progress regarding the 5S organization philosophy. Also, Gabriel and I had some help to work on the implementation of the lighting plan. We discussed with David Araujo about the ideas about the type of light we would use, the quantity and location of them, and we came up with a budget for the materials and purchases.

In addition to that, I started working on the shop safety plan, drawing the blueprint of the facility, mapping the potential risks of each area (the type and the intensity) and representing on the blueprint. The representation can be seen in the following figure.

The types of risks represented above are divided on physical, Chemical, Biological, Ergonomic, and Accident. The details of each of these groups are on the tables as it follows.

Another activity of the week was the preparation for the Solar Conference in San Francisco that occurred 07/12. All the team was involved on that preparation of the poster that Gabriel presented on the conference.

Update for the Week!

The ISE team has been splitted in order to accomplish our tasks for the last weeks. Me, Djonatan and João as responsibles for the 5S facility organizational part made some considerable progress during the week. With Eric's help, a board  is being constructed and organized to hold some tools and facilitate the work in the workstation. Also, we organized some power tools by type and labeled them. Something that was on our way to complete the 5S activities was the large amount of bolts and threads to be classified and organized. With great part of the facility organized, I started to think and research about a safety plan,  how I could present it to the professor and how to put it into practice. In addition to that, us from the ISE team had a meeting with two professors with the objective of getting some help in our activities and ensure that we are in the right path. With all of this being said I hope to be more engaged in my own activities in the following week and complete successfully my tasks in the right dates.

In the past week, ISE Team has worked on the following activities:

• 5S: We started the first steps of the 5S philosophy in order to improve organization, effectiveness of work, and better use of the facility space. Also, we designed a new tool board and we expect to finish its manufacturing process by the end of the next week.
  
• Implementation of the Activity Board: After discussing with colleagues and Professor, we decided that the best way to promote communication between groups and to keep on track the activities of each group and their faced problems would be to develop an Activity Board, where the teams can post their needs and activities.
  
• Financial Plan: The Spartan Superway staff gave us material for studying and developing a financial plan to help the project as a whole.
  
• Supply Chain: During this week we started to make an inventory of the actual number of tools and materials that we have in the facility. Also, the teams started to look what they need to do their job and we are planning to buy or acquire those materials next week or as soon as possible.
  
• Meeting with Supreeta: We discussed with Supreeta about our worries, doubts and how we could define our main objective in the project. After this meeting we realized what we need to do in order to help the project and the other teams, and right after we were capable of putting some ideas discussed into practice.

3rd week progress

After the starting weeks has passed, we could have an idea of what we can do in order to improve efficiency, effectiveness and give better condition to everyone that works on our facility. Well, the first step was to organize the factory. And how would we do it? Djonatan and I had the idea of implementation of the 5S philosophy.

First we tried to elaborate a 5S training for our coworkers, which the main objective was to make everyone understand the significance of the methodology and also to make possible the organization of the tools, material and space of the facility. So, at the beginning of the week, Marcela helped me and Djonatan in the confection of the slideshows for the presentation. On Wednesday, we presented the training for everyone and on the same day we started the first phase of the 5S methodology: The sorting phase, where we eliminate not-needed items and perform an initial cleaning. 

At the end of the week,the ISE team had a meeting with Ron, Dr Furman and Eric. This meeting helped us to enumerate what is important to each one of the group, what we could do about those things and then activities were assigned to us in order to help the other teams and the project as a whole.

The Next Step

Hi everyone! My name is Rafael Carvalho de Aguiar, I'm 22, and I will be a Summer Intern at SJSU and participant of the Spartan Superway team, coordinated by Dr. Burford Furman. Well, I just moved to San Jose - CA and I am really excited about the new things to learn, new mates, new work environment and places to know. Since I am an exchange student from Brazil, this is almost my 10th month living in the US. Before San Jose I used to live in Huntsville, a city in the state of Alabama, where I studied Industrial and Systems Engineering for two semesters.

In this new phase there will be many challenges, but I can tell that me and my team will face them with competence and enthusiasm.