Blog Post 6

Throughout my last four interviews, my main focus was to learn a little more about the business side of things. In one of my interviews with Mr. Fox, VP of supply chain, I learned more about all the supply chain issues that have been happening lately. These issues are happening because there is a lack of workers in factories and a shortage of materials.  Mr. Fox's overall job is to manage orders from when they are bought until they are delivered. So all the supply chain issues have really been on his plate. One thing that Mr. Fox said that stuck out to me was that the unknown is the biggest challenge. Events happening outside the US like the Russian Ukrainian war are affecting parker because they can't buy or sell any products that have been through Russia. Even if it's from a second-hand seller. One challenge I learned about during the interview was the challenge of finding and mentoring talent. Talent needs to be layered as you go up the chain so one promotion can lead to another. By doing this you incentivize people to work harder and overall bring more success to parker and to themselves. This goes back to the first pillar of the WIN strategy. Another interesting interview I had was with Mr. Conner, Group EHS Manager, and he told me all about how he works with other plants around the world to set regulations for them. As a result of parker being a global company, it has plants all across the world and these plants all have workers with different backgrounds and cultures. Mr. Conner is also responsible for trying to keep workers safe in their factories and plants and if there is an injury how to prevent further ones. One motto he told me was PMR which stands for Preventative (preventing accidents), Managing (how to respond to accidents), and responding (making changes to prevent further accidents).