Monday, October 13, 2008

Cincinnatti/Louisville Trip


I was able and fortunate to go on a business trip last week to Cincinnati and Louisville to do some training and visit a couple of factories.

The group I was with was able to go to a Toyota facility where they build the Toyota Avalon, Camry, Solara and the new Venzo. That was really cool to see cars being built from scratch. It takes about 20 hours for one car to be built, but once the assembly line is full, cars are coming off every minute. They wouldn't let us take pictures, so I don't have any, but it was cool.

The other place we went was the UPS World Port facility outside Louisville. We are a customer of UPS and we reviewed our contractual agreements, goals and trends. We were able to tour their massive operation. The coolest part was going to the "airport" facility where 90% of all UPS packages go and get sorted. There is over 127 miles of conveyor belt and it takes a package 13 minutes to be processed from the time it gets unloaded to the time it is ready for its final destination. The packages only get touched twice! Once when they come off the plane and once when they go back on.

The coolest thing though was being able to fly a Boeing 757 aircraft simulator. The simulator is $12million and worth every penny! It was so much fun! It is really like flying a commercial airliner. We didn't do anything too fancy, but we got to take off and land. My landing wasn't too great the first time....I over corrected at 130knots upon landing and I'm sure I died. I landed good the 2nd time though. That is something I will brag about. I'll have to attach a copy to prove it.

2 comments:

Ryan said...

Sounds like you had a good time. You will have to post that simulator thing so I can see it. That sounds like a lot of fun. What would have happened if you crashed and burned?

Justin said...

Not to brag, but I didn't land very well my first time. At the point of crashing the instructor hits the "reset" button. I got the plane on the ground, but tried to keep it in the center of the runway and overcorrected, spun out and probably flipped over. It felt like you were going down a really big hill on a bike and your front wheel starts to shake and you're gripping for dear life hoping not to crash.