MSHA training

Our instructors for the new miner M.S.H.A. training have taught us about many procedures and practices to ensure the health and safety of miners while on the job. We have learned about, among other things, hazard communication, safe vehicle operation, and proper PPE selection. Even though we have learned many details of practices to stay safe on the job, the knowledge from the past two days of training that will stick with me most is this; it is your responsibility to keep yourself safe. There are a surprisingly small amount of accidents compared to 30 years ago, but it can still get much better. And, last but not least, someone who fears a particular object, space, task, or procedure is much less likely to be injured by it. Long story short, whenever you are working in dangerous situations, keep a clear, alert mind and you are much less likely to get yourself or others injured.

Proofed by Tyler Bartek, Deric Phillips

MSHA and the final weeks of the semester

A big portion of our learning will be the projects that we will be working on. Many of these projects will take place in the local taconite mines. In order for us to be able to go on the mining property, all of the students of IRE are taking the MSHA course (Mine Safety and Health Administration). These 3 days prior to Thanksgiving break are dedicated to MSHA. During MSHA, students will learn about the dangers of working in the mines and how to avoid accidents and injuries.
Next week will allow students to put some of the things that they learned during MSHA in to context. All of us will be taking a course learning the entire process of mining, from the very beginning to the final product; through NRRI in Coleraine. Although I have worked in a mine for three years, I believe this will be a valuable course for me. It will fill in the gaps of things that I'm unsure of and will help solidify the "big picture" of projects that I will be working on in the future. I think that everyone will find this course to be rather interesting and a valuable asset to our future projects.
The week after that, most of the students will be able to put their knowledge from MSHA and the NRRI course in to practice. Some of the students will be job shadowing engineers that work in the mines. During job shadowing, we won't be working on projects necessarily. Job shadowing will allow us to see a week in the job of an engineer in industry. As I said, some of us will work in the mines, some will work in power plants and some will work in paper plants. These opportunities will provide us with some great insight of possible future careers.
Our final two days of school for the semester will consist of a study day for the FE exam, followed by taking the FE exam. It will be a great time. It's not the real FE exam, but practicing will definitely help us realize what we need to study and how well we are doing. I'm actually looking forward to taking it.

IRE Television Commercial

Yesterday WDIO came to shoot our TV commercial for Iron Range Engineering. As a developing program we want to get our name out to everyone in the area. The main goal of the commercial is to target engineering students who are not satisfied with the way traditional education has been tought to them, with the hope that they will look further into our program. There were two different scenes that they shot, one was taken in our workspace and the other was at TriTec. They are also going to add one of their shots from the mining outlook due to the morning's foggy weather. In the office they did both an individual and a group shot that allowed everyone to be a participant. At TriTec we did an action shot to show that we are a hands on learning form of education. Matt Mattson one of our past guest speakers and industry partner, actually designed a sign for us that was cut out by their massive plasma cutter. The sign said Iron Range Engineering and was made out of Stainless Steel, there is talk that we might hang it for our guest speakers to sign. The commercial went very well and stayed in the time slot they provided us with. The entire setup of the commercial was done by our Public Relations group, they deserve a pat on the back for all of the challenges they faced in order to make it happen.

Program Development Update

To the students in IRE, program development takes a high priority. This is the committee that is developing the new curriculum. A few weeks ago we submitted our proposal for competencies and grading techniques together. We found out that more work had to be done with our submittals. It seems to me that we need to scramble. Many of us have already spent time searching online for help in these areas. The problem is that a lot of these competencies have been created or ranked before. Now we are not sure where to look for assistance. Time is counting down in this semester and our desired target has not yet been identified. For the next few weeks in IRE, there will be a rush to get our work done.
Proofed by: Cory Moran and Deric Phillips

First Aid/CPR

On Wednesday, we had our First Aid/CPR training class. The training will provide us with First Aid/CPR knowledge that we hopefully will never have to use. We are now certified to administer First Aid/CPR. Our trainer was Adam from MED 1 out of Grand Rapids. For anyone out there who has already had the training, here is a small refresher. When giving CPR, the compression to breathe count ratio is 30:2 and roughly 100 compressions per minute. Everyone enjoyed the training, and Adam had an effective way of getting his points across without making it boring. It was nice for once to learn something else other than engineering.

Proofed by: Austin and Alex

Lean Six Sigma Training

Yesterday the students of IRE had Lean Six Sigma training. This training was provided by Cleveland Cliffs, who we will be partnering with. Ken Stocco, who is Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, led the training. This training was very beneficial to us as a class. Lean Six Sigma is a system that Cliffs uses to reduce the defects in their products and operations. This training will be helpful to our school functions and will greatly benefit our careers as engineers. Lean is a methodology that was developed to optimize the automotive industry. Six Sigma is a system created to eliminate product defects in industry. Now these two ideas have been combined and adopted by all kinds of industry, Cleveland Cliffs being one of them. Lean Six Sigma puts a huge emphasis on reducing waste to optimize production and save the company money. Ken taught us several ways to identify waste and ways to reduce or eliminate that waste. We also learned techniques to make a meeting run more efficiently. This will help us in our office because we have different types of meetings and with training, we will be able to constantly improve our operations. One of the points that I thought was interesting was Kaizen events. Kaizen events are small continuous improvements that help make operations run more efficient. One Kaizen event we did to better our office was a room configuration. We went through the entire office and organized the whole thing. The room configuration consisted of finding a permanent home for everything. Also items should be placed in a logical place, and have a purpose for being in that place. The Lean Six Sigma training was greatly beneficial to us as future engineers. A big part of engineering is making things better and more efficient and the training we received is all about doing that. IRE greatly appreciated that Cleveland Cliffs put on the class and our instructor, Ken, did a great job presenting the information. We all look forward to learning more about Lean Six Sigma as the program progresses.

Proofed by Christine and Austin

Activities

Last Tuesday we sent our first and hopefully final draft of the program curriculum to our advisory board. It has been a big weight lifted off our program development committee's shoulders. Also last week on Wednesday, we attended ICC and presented PowerPoint presentations about IRE and mechanical engineering in general. We spoke to five different classes including two Engineering Professional Development classes, and three Intro. to Engineering classes. The speeches went very well, although there is still room for improvement. T-shirts with our new Iron Range Engineering logo, were given out to those who asked good questions. Last Thursday we volunteered to help beautify the Mesabi campus. We gathered in groups of two and went around picking up stray garbage and trash. As a group, we have been taking workout hours for the past few weeks, playing football and running on our treadmill and elliptical machine. The long awaited deer season is just around the corner and we are all looking forward to spending some time away from the office, in the woods. We are having a big buck contest between the students. There are prizes for the heaviest buck, widest rack, and biggest doe. All in all, it has been very busy last week and everyone will enjoy the time off next week.

Proofed by Alex and Roth

Efficiency

IRE students are working daily on many things that we need to accomplish by the start of next semester.  There is no doubt that we are all hard workers and have strong work ethics.  The well-oiled machine that we strive to be is still in need of some TLC, talking in terms of efficiency.  There is a lot of time we use throughout the day that a couple of changes could be made to.  Here are a couple of things we could re-evaluate to help us perform more efficiently. Some of us use these methods, but most of us don't, including me.

• Hone your Thinking Skills
  
  • Make sure you always ask questions. Get an explanation you can understand. Communication is vital. Consider all scenarios before continuing.
    
  • Learn from your mistakes, accept the fact you made them.
    
  • Be amicable towards new perspectives, look to others for more experience and skill when needed.
    
  • Adapt your abilities for future use. Anticipate things that may or may not apply at the moment. Wait for proper timing.
    
• Focus
  
  • One project at a time will give you a sense of accomplishment.
    
  • Most steps are supported by the previous ones. Document steps one at a time, complete each one fully, and then proceed.
    
  • Remove distractions, give the project full attention.
    
    • Time can slip away if you forget a step or get off track.
      
• Think in advance
  
  • Planning ahead will make your processes and techniques faster.
    
  • Make a list of ideas (journal).
    
    • If there is no time at the moment, reflect on it later.
      
  • Weigh your Pros and Cons, (risk and benefits)
    
  • SSPL, Start Simple and Perfect Later. Learn the basics then move to complicated.
    
  • Choose tools and resources appropriate for certain tasks.
    
  • Prioritize.
    
  • Think realistically with your time. Plan out each step and set time aside for the unexpected. Think about the next step as you near the end of one.
    
  • Take on smaller portions.
    
  • Get the task at hand to a certain point where it can be restarted the next day.
    
• What's your behavior?
  
  • Record key information. Make sure you realize how your behavior and habits influence the outcome of a situation or event.
    
• Break Time!
  
  • Replenish and rejuvenate your body and mind.
    
  • Get up, move around to increase circulation and oxygen to your brain. It's like getting a fresh drink of water. Your mind will thank you.
    
• Organize
  
  • Make things easy to find and easy to clean.
    
  • Clear space= Clear Mind.
    
• Don't Worry
  
  • To adapt more efficiently you need education. Offer up some of your knowledge, skills and direction.
    
  • Have confidence in your decisions. Love your work.
    
  • Be new and innovative. Nothing is perfect.
    
  • Focused Thoughts= Productive Endeavors
    
• Enjoy your passionate pursuit
  
  • Make a list of things you've been waiting to do. Learn something new for yourself.
    

Proofed by Matt

    Re-proofed by Tyler and Matt

-Abraham Lincoln once said, "If I had six hours to chop a tree, I'd spend four hours sharpening the axe."

Personal Accounatability and Responsibility

Every individual within Iron Range Engineering has a certain level of responsibility to the school and to fellow students. Unfortunately, this responsibility (or personal accountability) isn’t always where it should be for individuals and the group as a whole. This being said, there are various ways in which we can tackle this issue, both constructive and destructive.

The first option I’d like to talk about is babysitting. By this I mean one person (or several persons) believes that every second of every workday has to planned out to a T, and everyone needs someone looking over their shoulders to make sure that we are on task. The second option is personal accountability. To me, this seems like a much better choice. Personal accountability is an obligation to answer for an action. This coincides with personal responsibility, which is the obligation to act. These two things (personal accountability and responsibility) are to be done by the individual alone, and the standards at which these are set are also done by the individual. I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to worry about ourselves and understand that everyone has a level of accountability that should be incorporated into our workday.

Understanding personal accountability and responsibility is a huge part of being a professional. Employers aren’t going to be babysitters; they are going to have expectations that we need to meet. By the end of our two years at IRE, I think everyone will understand and practice this professional obligation.

Proofread by: Derek Phillips
Alex Learmont