Senior Projects

Today I spent a majority of the day helping a worker here make some finishing touches of different parts for the cabinets he was working on. I spent a lot of time sanding and smoothing out and cleaning up edges and fixing blemishes left behind from the CNC machine. I also applied a putty to various cracks and holes created by drilling and nails in the wood. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about how precise they need to be to get things to fit together well and work as they’re supposed to. Below is a picture of one of the edges I cleaned up. It started like that and then I sanded off the edges until it was smooth.

Today I sat in on a CRMG meeting. This is the meeting where they access and review clients’ loans where they have loaned a million dollars or more. Our two cases were easy and everybody approved with in five minutes (they were both annual reviews with minor changes to them). The case after us was a new customer proposal and they (the five people of the board) discussed the risks for about twenty or twenty five minutes. This meeting is about assessing risk. CRMG means credit risk management group. They have to be alert in current events to assess how is a business is going to do. Also with sitting in on these meetings ( I sat in on two today), I learned that those meetings are nothing like school projects meetings. Everybody is jumping in and stating what they have to say and it is very productive. Obviously, you should voice your opinion because (in this case) a million dollars is a lot of money on the line (let alone the multi million dollar loans). Key things to take in:

-Make connection to your clients (people pay back loans so it is nice to know who your money is going to regardless of their financials). We, at Carrollton Bank, go out of our way to be the George Baileys of the world. We feel that the personal connections are key and makes us different in a good way.

-Voice your opinion

-Know what is going on (because current events can impact weather or not people can pay their balance)

The first day we toured a house with Lori (the owner and lead realtor) for a possible flip in the morning. When we got back to the office she showed me how they compare it to similar houses in the area and decide if its a good fit for a flip. For example after you buy it and renovate it can you still make a profit. In the afternoon she gave me a first time home buyers guide to read along with looking through biggerpockets.com while she worked on contracts.

Day 2 started out with a meeting with the owner of ARS Construction. We then went back to the office and had a zoom meeting with a local solar panel company.

Yesterday I did quite a few things to start the week. I went to breakfast and talked over what the process is like to order from vendors and how it’s done with the owner. After that we went to work and we were very busy. I built a few bike racks for inventory and checked in a lot of bikes for repair. The trick when checking in bikes is to give a lot of detail in the notes so that the mechanic can get everything done quickly. I also sold a couple bikes and talked to a lot of customers about what they were looking for. Unfortunately it’s been hard to get inventory so many of them were looking for a bike that we didn’t have in stock.

This week I will shadow a credit analyst. I did this last Thursday; however this time I get to dive deeper because I have the entire week (minus Thursday) to learn more. On Wednesday we have a presentation to present to the board for their approval on a million dollar plus loan. All the bank’s branches will be there doing the same thing. I was told last week that banking is a “who do you know” deal. I am learning a great deal of business through the bank. A key thing I started to learn is that business is not only money. It is the relations with the clients. Repeat clients are key and a good thing to have. One of the loans we were going over was a multi million dollar unsecured loan. You do not even consider doing that unless you have a “good business” with that client and vice versa. The two main take aways from today are:

-who do you know

-good business= having a good relationship with clients

The first week of my senior project was very succesfull. I learned a lot about the mechanics of a go kart along with setting it up for race day and changing it as the day goes on. We also spent some time on marketing, the business side in karting, and racekraft. I spent most of my time with Bobby Krug who is the assistant manager at Kartplex. He is also a racer which made it a lot easier to understand. He could explain things in terms of driving rather than the fully technical terms. Some key points I took away from the week are “a clean kart is a fast kart”, you need to stay on top of the changing track condition throughout the day, when you let the track conditions change and you don’t make changes is when you will fall down the timing sheets. Next week I will be working with a real estate investor and learning about sustainable building.

For the third day of my senior project I spent my time working on the next step of the process in making a cabinet which was lamenting the sides of the wood. When the wood is cut the sides that will be exposed and visible in the final cabinet aren’t finished and are just rough pieces of wood. To fix that they have a machine that automatically adhere the finishing laminate to the thin sides of the cabinets and shelves. I basically spent the entire day operating the machine you can see below. I learned how advanced some of the machines that they have are, and how much they speed up and ease the workflow of creating the cabinets and was very impressed by what it could do. Below are images of the machines, as well as before and afters of the wood I put through it.

For the second day of my senior project I was once again working in the manufacturing building of the company I am interning for. Today was more hands on than the first day, and I was working in the shop with one of the employees using the CNC machine. The guy who is organizing my internship is basically having me go through the process of creating a cabinet, learning a different step each day. So on the first day I learned to make the design, and on the second day I cut out the rough frame of designs on the CNC machine. The work mainly consisted of loading the wood onto the machine, putting in the specs for the pieces we needed, then letting it cut, and then sorting the pieces after they were cut and rinsed and repeated for the rest of the day. I learned a lot about how the machine actually works and how to operate a machine that large as well as being safe with the equipment we were using. A photo of the machine is attached below.

For the first day of my senior project I went to the manufacturing building for the cabinet company I am working for. When I got there I met some of the workers there and got a tour of the shop and was walked through the basics of the process they use to fabricate their cabinets. After that I spent the rest of the day working with and learning how to use the design software they use to make the designs and specs for the cabinets. Since I’m not a trained professional I couldn’t design actual projects there were working on, but I learned how to use the software and the basics of how to create a 3D space. I spent the time experimenting and figuring out how to create different things until I had a 3D rendering of a complete kitchen and dining space. Although it wasn’t an actual project, I learned a lot about what it takes to design a real piece of cabinetry and the amount of work that goes into making everything perfect and fit the way it is supposed to.

This was a successful week interning at the Carrollton Bank. Some key points I learned throughout this week was:

-How a company operates

-How a bank makes money

-How to audit taxes and credit

-more about banks in general

Im starting to learn a little bit more about what business actually is. The “glamour” part of business like the cars, houses, vacations, etc are the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is a whole lot of customer service. I hear everybody say, “make your clients feel at home”, “repeat business”, etc and to see that in front of you is a whole different experience than hearing it.