Working on a Project from the ground up
Working at a manufacturing facility as a sales representative was an interesting position for a new engineering graduate. Not the most typical path to start on as a new grad. I was interested in sales, or technical sales because it is a bit creative path to take as an engineer. And not everyone can do it, need to be technical and good with people. Sometimes I can do both and sometimes, neither. But I like to think of myself as semi okay at both.
When I applied to the company for sales, the manager was a bit surprised I wasn’t applying for the engineering department. I don’t think they had an opening at the time anyways and I didn’t even think of it I just said yup sales please. And got my foot in the door in a more creative manner than applying to classic engineering positions. One tip for people who are looking for work, to be more creative in the job they look for.
But it wasn’t that great sometimes, just hydraulic parts salesperson most of the time. But towards the end of when I was working there it started to get more technical since they knew I had an engineering degree.
More sales of the drilling tooling components, which is very technical and tough stuff. The hydraulic parts were still technical and tough, but didn’t take too long to get a decent grasp of that.
They also got me to start drafting hydraulic schematics using AutoCAD. Which was cool, because I didn’t have a lot of experience doing that. So getting experience like that was cool that didn’t have too much pressure. They still wanted me to deliver so just enough pressure. But I was still expected to keep my counter sales position so wasn’t a big deal.
The one big project that I worked on that was really cool. There was a customer that would order big projects that were not drills. Typically specialized power units is what he would order. This specific project was 4 smaller power units. That were going to be used for some sort of pressure transport system. The main technical sales colleague had designed it and sourced most of the parts and explained the scope of the project to me. I started to order the parts he sourced out. So calling and making the purchase orders, pretty standard for the sales position. While the parts were on the way I started to draft up the hydraulic schematic for the power unit. Being able to draft up the hydraulic schematics for the sales projects was pretty handy. Instead of asking an engineer for something pretty simple. They were busying with main focus of the company, drilling rigs.
The parts started to flow in, some had pretty long lead times so there was always a bit of a distance between the arrivals. I created a staging shelf for the project to organize the parts when they arrived. I would receive the parts and put them there and check it off. The logistics colleague would let me handle the parts for this project.
Once the project was ready for assembly I wanted to do a lot of it myself, but I didn’t quite have the experience for the total job. I created a work order and a mechanic helped me with the assembly. But I definitely put in quite a bit of time of the assembly. Oh I also made the hydraulic hoses for the project too, of course. Part of the sales team duties was to make new hoses for customers, I didn’t learn it at first but after a while I became decently confident in it. Can be a challenging job sometimes.
So until now, I have ordered the parts, received them, staged them, drafted the hydraulic schematics and assembled the components to create the four individual power units.
The hydraulic pump the main technical sales guy had sourced it, it was a very specific pump with a long lead time. He had me order 5 pumps so we had an extra one. Small pumps with air freight and 6 weeks lead time, it was worth to order an extra one.
For the electric motor to power the hydraulic pumps he gave me a supplier to research, but I had to decide on the size of what we would need given torque requirements and power constraints. The senior colleague double checked my work before I ordered them of course, but very cool part of the design process.
I ordered 4 individual neat shipping boxes for the delivery of the power units. I assembled these shipping crates and loaded each crate with the power units. Each kit had the components, hoses, schematics. I don’t think I had a little manual, just the schematic.
They were neatly packed and I attached the packing slips and shipping information and loaded them up on the truck with a fork lift myself.
It was definitely a very satisfying project from the ground up.
From purchasing, design, assembly and shipping. It was a very great experience of many different areas.
