Domestic Plant Trek - Week 2

Week Two of the Domestic Plant Trek started with the flight from Seattle to Los Angeles.  This was the first time that most of us had seen temperatures over 60-degrees since about October, so needless to say we were all in good spirits.  The California sunshine recharged us and we all felt ready for another week of adventures.

Landing at LAX, looking out at the Hollywood sign

From LAX, we drove out to the Eastern suburb of Rancho Cucamunga.  After a morning of traveling, we decided to take a nice leisurely run around the town which ended up at an In-N-Out Burger.  By our calculations the run didn’t quite come out to calorie neutral, but oh well!  That evening a large group of us went to the Toby Keith Bar down the street and had a great time pretending we know how to line dance.

Jogging in Rancho Cucamunga

Enjoying the post-run meal at In-N-Out

The hotel was on Route 66!

On Monday morning, we headed to our next partner company: Amazon!  We had the incredible opportunity to tour a fulfillment center and see the amazing operations that make the whole system work.  If you want to learn more about what we saw, I’d highly recommend this clip from 60 Minutes.  Everyone at the site was very welcoming and we all left in awe of what they are able to achieve.

After a full day of touring the fulfillment center, we boarded a bus and headed out on a road-trip to Tucson.  Including a quick stop for dinner, the drive took just over 7 hours and we arrived around 11:00pm for what would turn out to be our shortest stop of the trip.  This was my first time back in Tucson in over a year, but unfortunately there wasn’t even enough time to get down to the U of A campus.  Soon after arriving at the hotel, we all crashed into a short bout of sleep.

Road trip to Tucson

Tuesday morning we woke up early and headed to the other side of the Airport to tour Raytheon Missile Systems.  I had toured the site back in 2007, but this experience gave me a completely different perspective.  We had a chance to see a lot of the automation that was being implemented into the factories, and also got to tour one of the final assembly lines.  And Raytheon definitely gets the award for best lunch (fajitas with all the fixings)!

As soon as the tour at Raytheon was over, we headed straight to the airport and boarded a flight to Dallas, then another one to get us to Austin.   

The only picture I took of Tucson was as we took off for Austin!

We landed in Austin after dark, but that didn’t stop some of us from heading out for a run to the downtown area.  The out-and-back route turned out to be 7 miles and it felt great to move a bit after so much traveling.

The Texas State House (Photo Credit: Weng Hong)

Our nocternal running group at the State House (Photo Credit: Weng Hong)

Wednesday morning we headed off to visit the corporate headquarters of Dell.  We had the chance to hear from some of their senior executives and meet with Michael Dell himself!  It was very interesting to hear his perspective of the company strategy now that he’s taken it private again.  As he put it, they are now the world’s largest start-up!  We also had a chance to tour one of their data centers and test out some of their prototype equipment.   All-in-all a very interesting experience; it certainly exposed me to more of the computing industry than I had seen before.

We had an early flight the next morning so rather than sleeping a few hours just to get up again, some of us made a pact to stay up all night.  And we almost made it.  We started the evening at Stubb’s BBQ, one of the “must eat” places in the city.  The food was marvelous (though we all ate way too much), and soon we were moving onto Rainey Street to experience some authentic Austin bars.  We found a nice place where we could listen to live music outside and were in no hurry to leave.  Eventually we moved on to 6^th Street and hopped around the bars until they started last call around 1:30.  At that point, we were getting hungry again and decided to do what any rational person would do at 1:30am on a Thursday morning in Austin: eat chicken and waffles!  We trekked down to the 24Diner and had ourselves a great meal.  By the time we finished, it was a little after 3:30 and we had run out of ideas and energy.  We threw in the towel and took cabs back to the hotel, in time to get a little over an hour of sleep before getting up and heading to the airport.

Stubb's BBQ!

Live music on Rainey St. (Photo credit: Weng Hong)

Flaming Shots on 6th St.

Chicken and Waffles at 3am?  Why Not!

Our next flight took us to the last destination of Plant Trek: Puerto Rico!  We arrived to a completely different climate of 80-degree temperatures and moderate humidity.  We checked into the Marriott Condado and enjoyed our first night in paradise.  Amgen held a reception for us on Thursday night and we had a chance to meet some of our hosts, but eventually the previous night caught up to me and I headed off to fall soundly asleep.

Landing in San Juan

View from the hotel!

Friday was our last “official” day of Plant Trek and we spent it touring Amgen’s facilities in Juncos.  It was interesting to compare this site with the one we had visited in Rhode Island over the summer, and our hosts were incredibly welcoming.  At the end of the day, we gathered for a group shot outside in the sunshine before boarding the bus back to the hotel.  And just like that, Plant Trek was over.  Now it was time for vacation!

A lot of gathered at a restaurant on Friday night for some authentic Puerto Rican food, and we completely overwhelmed the wait staff!  I guess they weren’t expecting 40+ people to show up for dinner at the same time, but they eventually sorted it all out.   

How to overwhelm a restaurant in PR (this was only half the table!)

On Saturday we checked out of the hotel and checked into an apartment down the street that we had found on AirBnB.  Before leaving the hotel, we sat down with Professor Shiba Shoji who had accompanied us on the whole trip and helped facilitate all of the plant debriefs.  Shobi told us his amazing life story and what he has seen as trends over the last 50+ years as a management guru and one of the worlds foremost leaders in quality and continuous improvement.  Words can't really do justice to the incredible insights we gained!

Chat with Prof. Shoji

We spent the rest of the day lazing on the beach and by the pool, enjoying staying in the same place for a change after 12 days of constant travel.  On Saturday night we headed down to Old San Juan for the San Sebastian Festival, which just happened to be the same weekend that we were there.  This is one of the largest celebrations of the year in Puerto Rico and it was quite a party!  I’m not sure how many people were downtown, but it was definitely in the tens of thousands and they were all enjoying the wonderful tropical weather and loud salsa music at one of the four main stages.  We ended up walking there and back, but had a great time experiencing the local scene!

San Sebastian Festival

Lots of people downtown for the festival!

Sunday and Monday were split between eating and lounging, but eventually we had to head back to reality.  So it was on Monday afternoon we went back to the airport and took our last two flights of the trip, arriving back in Boston just in time to be hammered by another snowstorm.

Yoga on the beach

 

Leaving PR and heading back to frozen Boston

Looking back at the last two weeks, it is truly hard to describe what an incredible experience it was to go on the Plant Trek.  As I mentioned before, it is one of the highlights of the LGO program and it exceeded even my wildest expectations.  Over the course of 16 days, we traveled over 9,000 miles on 11 flights, 6 different busses, and one crazy 14-hour minivan drive through the Polar Vortex.  Along the way, we visited seven partner companies and learned first-hand what it takes to operate in those seven unique industries.  We came out of the experience as an even closer class and with a great appreciation for operations.  Thank you LGO!