As a Minimum, Your Job Shadow Report Should Include the Following

Job Shadow Report

As a minimum, your job shadow report should include the following: 1. Name of the company 2. Date and time of your job shadow 3. First name of person(s) who hosted you or whom you observed 4. Name(s) of the manufacturing process(es) you observed, including machines or other equipment. Under this item, get as detailed as you wish. 5. Any other company information or observations about the workplace you wish to include 6. What you personally gained from the experience; that is, how it might be helpful in your future job or career pursuits.

Your report need not be lengthy, but it would probably take about one typed page to include all the items above.

Here is a sample…

MFG 156 – Job Shadow By … To satisfy the job shadow requirement for MFG 156, I contacted …’s training director, …. We agreed that Tuesday, December 6, would be the day that I would do the job shadow. It was to begin at 9:00 am. As planned, I arrived on time. When we entered the lobby we saw a sign welcoming us from GRCC. After a short wait in the lobby, a man named … came and escorted us out onto the shop floor. There we met …. After a brief introduction, we continued on a tour of the facility with …. We were told that … has been in business for fifty five years and has eleven facilities throughout the United States. They do primarily aluminum sheet metal work and the machining is limited to three axis. All of the work is for the aerospace industry, with their main customers being ..., …, and …. Our first job shadow stop was at the programming department. It is a room built on the shop floor, enclosed to keep out the noise. Inside there were three programmers working. … and … were using Cadkey to convert drawings from the customer into a usable format. … was converting the CAD programs into CAM programs. I spent about a half hour looking over …’s shoulder watching him perform his job. … told me that the programmers were people who had worked on the shop floor operating machines and over time had progressed to become programmers. He also explained that programmers were expected to leave the programming office and work out on the shop floor when needed. That situation occurred and later I saw … operating a machine. Next I slid my chair over to the opposite end of the room and watched … produce a program to run a part on a turret punch. … was using a program he called Amada. I think it is a program designed to work specifically with their turret punch machine. This factory seemed to rely heavily on this particular machine. The turret holds about 34 tools and the program automatically chose the best tool for the required radius or straight edge cut of the part. Zooming in on a radius, the programmer could see any material that was remaining and could choose a different tool or sequence that might work better. Mastercam is also used heavily in the programming department. After watching … until about eleven thirty, we stopped for lunch. After lunch we found … and he took us to another place in the shop where we met a guy named …. Among other things, … operates a gantry mill that edge forms and drills long aluminum extrusions. The extrusions where clamped to a long table with numerous pneumatically controlled vices. He explained that previously the vices had to be operated one at a time with an air ratchet. Having all the vices operated simultaneously with a pneumatic system was a huge time saver. The mill has three heads and is capable of machining three parts simultaneously but only one of the heads is used most of the time. … showed us how he uses the MCU to select and run a program and also adjust speeds and feeds as needed. He also had to adjust the Z axis periodically because the machine had a problem that would not allow it to hold a steady retract depth as the head worked its way from one end of the part to the other. Major program modifications were generally not allowed by the machine operator. If a program needed changes, a form was filled out and submitted to the programming department. Nearby the gantry mill was a large rack of long aluminum extrusions. Next to it was another work station that cut the material to proper lengths so it was ready for … and the gantry mill. Somewhere near each work station there was a rack of work orders. It was up to the individual to decide what work order to pick. Some work orders had priority and were indicated with red tags. Purple tags indicated a hot item that had to be worked first. After spending about an hour shadowing …, … and I left to go find …. Along the way, we roamed around a bit and saw some of the other work stations. I saw an area that had about three Bridgeport EZ Trak vertical mills. We didn’t have permission to bother other workers besides the programmers and …, so I watched an older gentleman from a distance work on a Bridgeport. There were other work stations that I saw from a distance. One place they have entry level workers slapping aluminum parts with rubber straps to beat them into flatness after heat treating. All heat treating and painting is done elsewhere. We found … and as we walked toward the exit, he answered any questions we had. He said that some of the work is going to China and that they are thinking about opening a facility in Mexico. … and three other employees we met all had done time at GRCC. He also hinted that when we are done with school we should consider filling out a job application at …. That concluded the job shadow.