In a workspace full of advanced technology holds their shepherd, Peter Richards. Peter is seen as the face of IT here at Jetco but wears many hats. The official title he holds is continuous improvement / business intelligence director, but he likes to describe his responsibilities as “facilitating.” When I asked him to go into more detail about a day in the life, he responded, “A day in the life? No day is the same for me. I don’t think I’ve ever repeated a day here.”
Peter takes care of a broad range of responsibilities that ultimately have a huge impact on keeping the ball rolling here at Jetco. This includes completely setting up new hires with their electronic devices (phones, laptops and/or tablets) and applications, systems and software, working with vendors to keep all company devices operational and secure from cyber-attacks, approving invoices for fuel, and running critical reports for managers and the shop to use.
“I usually start the day off by sending out reports to the shop and all of the managers,” Peter said. These reports are then used to determine how we can improve in a certain department based on the information provided. “Our job is to provide enough information to reveal the problem at hand,” Peter said. These reports are called “dashboards,” which give managers a detailed description of exactly what is going on with a particular department through visual aids such as charts, graphs and KPIs.
When they send these reports to the shop, for example, it provides an array of metrics. One daily report Peter sends details how many trucks and trailers are in service or in need of maintenance. “If a truck is due for an inspection tomorrow and we have a load scheduled to go out on it, we have a big problem,” Peter said. These reports thus help operations and the shop proactively communicate, work together, plan ahead and avoid potential issues.
Peter has worked at Jetco for four years and from what I can tell, he enjoys it. He told me he likes the fact that something different is thrown at him each day. “Sometimes it’s like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, you never know what you’re going to get,” Peter said. Peter plays a key role in the constant improvements Jetco makes, hence his title, and we can’t wait to see what improvements come in 2023.