FED EX By: Kerri Smith

EDT 661 Educational Hardware & Systems Support

My Brother

My brother, Mike, works for the Fed Ex company in New Berlin. He has worked there for five years as a Project Manager. (Here, he is taking some time off of work!)

ComputersIn his office, they use computers as a means of processing data and writing software to do things such as: *create applications for systems or users *generate reports *publish data to other systems to enable processing of packages (where they are sorted to, what’s on the pallets, where they go, etc)

More About Their Computers

Enable them to develop applications (Sortation, Rating, Tracking, etc)

Store data and test software applications before they are moved to production

Jobs in their area are developers, database administrators, software testers, and project managers

Business side of the SmartPost company resides upstairs and does such functions like Marketing, Sales, Pricing, Logistics, etc

Determining Computers

Developers need computers with a lot of memory to enable them to write and run code. This is done before information is deployed to a QA (Quality assurance) environment which is where he validates and completes testing.

IT AreaThis photo is of a TV in the IT area that shows the hub statuses(Green).  Red indicates a hub is down/not sorting which is critical, and Yellow means they are experiencing a problem.

Importance•This is part of his work area. The TV shows database queries to look up data and customer maintenance application.

•IM application allows them to chat with each other and share data from their work stations.

Hub Sortation Floor

This is a photo from their Hub Sortation Floor. The auto sorter goes around on the track.  As an available tray comes by, the auto-sorter triggers the track with the package on it so it slides onto an available tray.  The package then travels around the sort area until it reaches the chute where the package needs to go.

Hub Sortation Floor

Information is already stored in the computers. As the package travels to the correct chute, it’s flipped down the sort where workers manually stack them onto pallets that the forklift drivers pick up and drop off at the assigned dock doors. And soon your package arrives at your front door!

Quote

“What I enjoy about my job is it’s often challenging to understand the technical aspects of learning new systems and knowing how they work so you can better test them to find defects before they go to production. I also enjoy working with our peers at Ground and at Corporate in Memphis when it comes to company wide initiatives to test systems from end to end. ”~Mike Smith, Program Manager

Resources

Thank you to my brother, Mike Smith, for providing me with the information I needed to understand “a little more” about what he does with technology at his job.

Thank you to FedEx in New Berlin for allowing me to tour their facility.