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Ashley Ross
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Ashley Ross
IMSE Undergrad Class of 2014
Fed Ex Ground
Who is FedEx Ground? Ranked number 11 on FORTUNE World’s Most Admired Companies list. “FedEx Corporation will produce superior financial returns for its shareowners by providing high-value-added logistics, transportation, and related business services through focused operating companies.” (fedex.com/our-story)
Current Role: Facilities and Material Handling Design Engineer
A Day in the life of a F&MHE Design Engineer:
This story could greatly differ depending on who you work for in this department. I’ve had the privilege of working for two managers in this department thanks to a reorganization within the group. My daily job slightly changed but not by much. In a broad overview my day goes as follows:
5:30 AM: Wake up and get ready for the day
6:15 AM: Commute 35-45 minutes to work, traffic depending
7:00AM – 3:30PM: My daily tasks differ from day to day depending on what answers I have received to the questions I had asked from the day prior. Most days, I spend time resolving issues that other design engineers find with our company specifications or standard drawings. This leads to conferring with different departments and possibly reaching out to the vendors we use in the field to come to a proper resolution to the problem at hand.
If it’s not a specific internal issue brought to my attention, I will be working on small projects handed out by management to look into the impacts that moving material handling equipment around would have on the rest of the system. Other times, I will prepare informational bulletins for other departments to be informed about why we have things set up the way we do.
As in any company there are meetings scattered throughout the days; staff meetings, one-on-one’s with management, meetings with vendors, etc. If you work for other managers there can be a lot more travel involved.
The design engineers that are doing the majority of the heavy lifting for the design of the actual material handling systems have to go to the sites to make sure that they are building per specifications and following the guidelines they had set forth. They will also get the drawings for the buildings to check over and put into our systems to have on file. While yet another design engineer may only work on conceptual designs for future building plans we may use. As I stated before the difference in daily tasks for the same title engineer can greatly differ depending on which manager’s group you are in. The start time here is very flexible.
There are core hours that you have to be here, 9:00am – 3:00pm EST. Outside of that just get your hours in. Meaning, if you want to get here at 6:00am and leave at 3:00pm you can, but you can also come at 9:00am and leave at 6:00pm. As long as you are fairly consistent with your hours and are here in the core hours span it isn’t a problem.
Why chose this career option: The possibilities are endless! Your day is never really the same, so you shouldn’t get bored easily. You also get to interact with different groups and vendors with both, so it’s not the same faces all the time which is nice.
Most surprising thing I didn’t expect coming out of college: Having been with two different companies already, I didn’t expect well to be with two different companies already! However, I did that for personal reasons and not career oriented reasons.
My 2 cents: Make sure that you really think out career changes before you make them. Determine the true reason you want to make them, in three to five years from now is that still going to matter as much to you? Can you make the changes you want to achieve by moving around internally? Think about it.
