Domestic Plant Trek: Day 10-13 Raytheon, Dell, and Amgen

Hey all,
This is going to be my last post about the domestic plant trek. Sorry about the lack of photos, but the last half of plant trek was a bit of a blur! Below is a summary of our whirlwind of visits the second week of plant trek.

Monday: After the Amazon distribution center visit, we all rode on a bus to Raytheon in Tucson, AZ. We were on the bus for approximately 7 hours and arrived near midnight in AZ.

Tuesday: Visited Raytheon in Tucson. International students were not allowed on this site visit because the products that they manufactured were for defense applications. After the visit to Raytheon we flew to Austin, TX to visit Dell. Most of us went into Austin for dinner. A few of us went to Stubbs and enjoyed some famous TX BBQ!

Dinner at Stubbs in Austin

Wednesday: Dell executives all the way from Michael Dell (whoa!), Jeff Clarke, and others spoke to us at Dell. This was by the far the most top heavy of LGO visits. Dell seems to have some great plans in place for revitalizing their company post-privatization.

Thursday: Travel day to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the evening Amgen hosted us for an appetizer reception.

Friday: Visit Amgen's manufacturing facilities in San Juan! The plant where they bottled, labeled, and shipped off their biologics was very impressive.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 5-9 Amazon Dinner

Hey all,
Quick blog post about the last few days:

Day 5: Drove to Seattle from Portland. While in Seattle we ate at Tamarind Tree, great Vietnamese food by the way, and visited Pike Place. Afterwards we had a dinner with Amazon.

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Pike Place Starbucks 

Day 6: We visited two Boeing facilities (Everett and Renton). 

Boeing future of flight museum. 

 Day 7: Day off in Seattle. Hung out with my friend Bryan from graduate school.

Day 8: Flight to LA from Seattle. A few of us spent some time with Josh's family in LA. Thanks Josh's family for the hospitality! We ate very good Korean and Japanese food in Orange County.

Eating lunch at Shik Do Rak

 Day 9: We had a great time visiting Amazon in LA.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 4 Nike!

Hey all,
The end of day 3 was nice because we had the fortune of being allowed to access the Nike employee store! I bought a few gifts and some new running shoes (the Nike free Hyperfeel). I spent the rest of the evening with my parents.

Day 4 was a heavy dose of Nike in general and Nike supply chain in particular. We arrived at Nike around 8am and received free Nike shirts (see me wearing mine in the below pictures). Our first formal event was a talk by two Nike VPs of Manufacturing/Sourcing. It is amazing to learn about the challenges that Nike faces as it continuously innovates on its product and manufactures its products in Asia. Afterwards, we had a talk by Nikhil who some of us met when he interviewed us a few months back. He spoke about his role as a Nike Supply Chain strategy Director.

In the late morning we went on a tour of the Nike campus. What an amazing (and LARGE) campus! Very well laid out buildings and art strewn about the area.

We closed out our Nike portion of the day with a visit to their IHM facility (in house manufacturing) which manufactures airbags for Nike shoes.

Army and Navy jerseys!

Hey

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 3 Travel to Portland

Hey all,
We passed an uneventful night in the Marriott downtown. We are all now awaiting our flight from DTW (Detroit) - DEN (Denver) - PDX (Portland). We are glad that as of 9:55am no delays/cancellations are reported for our flights! So far so good.

One thing I was not prepared for was the weather here in Detroit. It is -10F! Feels like -35! Wow... I went outside to get into the mini-van and I felt like a blast of cold hit me in the face! 

Below are some pictures of us waiting for our flight at DTW.

Domestic Plant Trek: Days 1-2 Driving to Detroit

Hey all,

If you do not know, all LGOs are required to attend the Domestic Plant Trek, a two week trip in between the fall and spring semester. We fly (and drive) around the country visiting various partner company manufacturing facilities and headquarters. I'll try to keep my blog updated with what happens during plant trek so that I can keep a record and let you all know what is happening.

Day 1 (January 5th)! The original plan was to fly from BOS-BWI (Baltimore)-DTW (Detroit) to visit GM. We were set to leave 1pm, so I got to the airport a little early at 10am. While in the bus heading to the airport David lets me know what our flight from BWI to DTW has been cancelled so we should stay home until more contingency plans are made. I was already there so I stayed and helped out our fearless Scott figure out how to re-route our Southwest Airlines tickets to either Detroit, Denver, or Portland. Detroit would be nice, but we were planning on heading to Denver (our connection to Portland) or straight to Portland (where our next stop was Nike!). The earliest we could get out to PDX (Portland) was Wednesday morning, so that was unacceptable.

With my head hung low, I returned home thinking that we were going to miss GM AND Nike.. Little did I know that later in the afternoon our domestic plant trek committee decided to rent mini-vans and have us all DRIVE to Detroit! That sounds like a desperate plan, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So about 40 of us met at BOS to rent mini-vans. I rode along with Xiaodi, Raf, Ellen, and Willow in the Van Guard! We drove all night from 5pm to about 9am this morning. During the way we encountered some treacherous weather (thanks Raf and Ellen for driving through most of it!), but we eventually made it safe to Detroit. 

Raf and Willow were considering heading to the second GM plant in the afternoon, but the rest of us were too tired to head out. After breakfast I slept for 3 hours and feel immeasurably better. Most of us have missed GM's plant tours, but we do get to have dinner with some GM executives tonight. 

UPDATE (7 January 2014): We actually did not make the dinner at the Heritage Center with GM executives, but we did have dinner with ourselves in the hotel! 

Driving to Detroit!

More driving to Detroit

Another picture of our drive

Breakfast at the GM center after we arrived into Detroit

Picture taken from the food court at the GM Renaissance Center. This was our celebratory breakfast meal. 

Thanks to Ellen for taking these shots during the drive. 

Eating at Andiamo's in the GM Renaissance Center (GM HQ and where our hotel was)