Post the 20th

Hello out there!

I hope you guys are not too sad because of the bad weather in Germany. But I can tell you it's not even better where I am :-)

This gonna be a long post with many pictures because I promised you I'll tell you a little bit about my work and afterward I'll tell you the happenings from last week. 

And by the way: This is the 20th post from Canada :-)

Ok, lets start with talking about business!

Our Company prepares the needed wood parts out of unfinished wood by his self. 

We have a lot of prepared wood parts in stock and they are sorted in shelves by wood species, length, thickness and quality. This whole department is organized by his self. 

Just one shelf

The Material department makes sure that always enough prepared wood parts are in stock.

Every morning, a employee gathers the required materials based on the material list for each customer order. He takes those materials on different carts. 

The guy at the conturex machine grabs these parts from the cart based on the information on the screen and puts them into the conturex. 

Actually he gets one of those sheets (see picture below) for each customer order. On this sheet he scans every Item (door) to get the required information on the Workstation-Screen. 

After scanning one item he takes the material from the cart and puts them onto the conturex machine...

After he scanned 'OK' he gets the Label for the Door and all part for this Item (Door) go trough the machine....

Here you can see a short Video how it works...

And here you can see what happens after he puts a part into the conturex machine... 

These pictures below show us the parts which are already machined by the conturex.
As you see every first part of each door has got a label on it.

These Labels are now important for the next Workstation.
The guys who assembles the doors will scan the Barcodes and all required details which are important to build the door will appear on the Workstation-Screen.

This is exactly the door which we see on the screen (one Picture above)

Every Workstation has the possibility to set Notifications like 'Ready' which means the work on this particular Item (Door) is done. 

But they can also set Notifications like 'Door has bad quality', 'Glass is not ready' or 'a part is missing or broken'. 

The benefit of those Workstations is the possibility to evaluate these Notification. Because all Events which happens on every Workstations are saved in a SQL Database. And this becomes important later for evaluations. Another advantage is that we will save a lot of paper and no Information gets lost on the way because all Informations are saved in the System and showed on a Screen.

We want to spread these Workstation through the whole Production. But right now only the Workstation Conturex and Assembly Sash (Door) is active. 

This week I try to prepare the Workstation "Sanding/Cleaning - Quality Check"...

Sometimes we need to prime the doors for our Customers. Here we want to set up a Workstation too...

With a different program (not our 'Door Program' for the Conturex), which allows me to make some request to a SQL Database, I created some sweet reports/charts to schedule our capacity utilization for the conturex. I use this program also to evaluate the amount of produced doors and rebuilt doors and broken parts and Glass ...

Creating reports, setting up new Workstations thinking about new Workflows is pretty much that what I'm doing the most of the time at work. It's still exiting to have new challenges every day.

Probably I could update you on this in the next weeks... :-)


But now I'd like to tell you briefly about my weekend.

On Friday I did some maintenance work on my dirt bike. I cleaned the air filter and I changed the transmission oil. Unfortunately we hadn't the best weather for a ride last weekend so my dirt bike stayed in the garage. But its prepared for the next ride.

On Saturday we watch the Champions League Final.
The German guys (which I met last week) came around at our house and we bought some beer and enjoyed the game.

During the game our little Neighbour visited us in our garden probably to check the scores...

But this isn't unusal because last time I saw those guys in Neighbours garden ...

We played also some bocce and darts until we joined to Braden's cousins birthday.
First we had dinner and some beer. Then we played some beer pong and finally we visited a pub.

It was a funny Birthday...

On this Monday after work we played soccer with Quirin and Julia (German guys again). Taylor and me drove by. It was actually the last day for Quirin and Julia on Vancouver Island. Now they want to discover other areas in Canada.

It was a fun soccer evening, though!

An this is pretty much all I can tell you guys so far ...


Oh before I forget again... One special picture I won't hide!

Last posts I forgot to add it but now its time. I took this picture when I 'skyped' to my Godmother and her Kids.
They are so funny :-)
Unfortunately it's almost one month ago, it needs to be repeated!!!

And I say goodbye - NiteNite - and thanks for reading!

Have a good Day,
Chris

New Rim works for me!

Hello Guys,

In my latest post l said that I would take some picture of my work (workstations and paperless production), but I didn't because we had some problems with making the stations work and also the conturex machine had problems and this was more important to fix then working on my issues.
But I'm really sure that I could post some pictures during the next week. Probably I can show you guys also pictures on my new Idea. Cause I work on a new way on how to see the capacity utilization from the conturex machine. Because our Program which we use doesn't fit our requirements in this point. So I need to make some queries to our SQL Database to show particular Informations in a different program (report manager). But anyways! This is probably not the reason why you're reading this Blog. :-)

Let me tell you some amazing things! My bike is fixed. On Friday and Saturday I remount the new rear wheel and let it check from guy in Chemainus (R.E. Cycle). During they were checking my bike I drove around Chemainus and I took these pictures....

Finally I picked up my bike and it was ready to see the dirt again.
But before it got dirty again, I took some nice pictures :-)

Yesterday I checked a new spot to ride. It's a half developed golf corse and they run out of money. Now it's very popular for dirtbike's and atv's. Actually a Guy which I met on the gas station on friday told me about this place. And yes, it is a amazing place!!! I won't hide these pictures for you...

Oh and the young boy on this first picture below is Brandon, I met him there and he showed me this are. Nice guy...

After this amazing ride I met two german guys. Actually I met them in Facebook and we decided to meet each other personally. So we went to a pub and played some pool. 

It was a great evening and my day was almost perfect (just almost because of one thing - I miss my girlfriend)...

And today is Happy Victoria Day. I decided to watch the parade in Victoria and I took my Bike with me because I would try the race track in Victoria after. The two german guys joined me. We were in Victoria between 11 am and 3 pm. We watched the parade till noon and till about 2 pm I rode on this great race track with my dirt bike. And this two hours of driving (with breaks) were actually enough for me. My whole body hurt and I run out of energy! :-)

But unfortunately I haven't take pictures of this track. 

But can show you some pictures from the Parade...

And another long weekend ends with a bottle of cold beer on the couch (Grolsch)...

Enjoy your next short workweek...
Thanks for reading my blog and being interested in my trip :-)

Nite Nite, Chris

PS: We took this picture on our way home from Victoria!

I found a picture of the race track on Facebook :-)