Arbonne
International, headquarters, El Toro California
I
went to work full time at Arbonne International in November of 1988 at the invitation of
it's president, Petter Moerck.
I
was first introduced to Arbonne by a friend of a friend, who came home crying
(literally) one evening when I was visiting. "What's the matter?",
we asked, and were answered with a deluge of worry, problems and concerns, all
relating to the computerization of her company. At her request I met with it's
president. We arranged to visit Arbonne after hours, there to look into the
secretive work their computer programmer had been doing.
Their
primary computer was a Compaq 286: 32 megs of Ram, PICK operating system, an 80 meg hard
disk, a 60 meg backup tape, and seven (7) serial ports connected to Televideo
terminals acting as order entry workstations. A single TI dot matrix printer
was used to print orders which were hand carried to the warehouse for
fulfillment. Additionally the programmer had purchased 9 Macintosh's and a
single laser printer, placed them on desktops and connected a few of them
together with AppleTalk.
Their programmer had convinced the company
to use Macs as workstations connected to the Compaq PICK system; Order
picking tickets were to be printed in the warehouse and reports were to be
printed on the Appleshare laser
printer. The company President was concerned that the programmer was failing to
accomplish this, his wiring of the building to support it was incomplete
and the deadline to do so had come and gone with no completion. The
programmer had become highly defensive and the entire company was distraught.
I
located and hired Jonathan Sisk, an erudite PICK author and
training guru who, surprisingly, lived just a few miles away. Together with
the President we invaded the programs of this 'programmer' one evening, and
learned that little to no progress had been made toward achieving the goals he
had promised the company. Unfortunately, Arbonne
had devised it's marketing plans around this vision and had sent PR out
promoting the new system 'to the max'. It was two weeks from the scheduled annual sales meeting.
No wonder my friend's friend was crying.
The
President asked me if I could help, and I told him I,
with Jonathan's support, would do what I could. The next day Jonathan recommended
(and I hired) several
accomplished programmers. So began a process of
re-engineering the company, its sustained and sometimes explosive growth, and
my start down the path toward becoming a Professional Project Manager.
When I first visited,
Arbonne had but 8,000 square feet and 13 employees. When I left, It had relocated to
an approximately 40,000 sq. ft. facility and had 45 employees. As Operations Coordinator, I was intimately
involved with every aspect of the company's activity: phones, storage racks,
records storage, employees schedules- and both computers and custome software
applications.. I
had 36 ports on a C.ITOH minicomputer running PICK when I left, and all of the Macs had
access to it, fulfilling the earlier vision.
My
biggest effort was a revision of the order fulfillment process. In my first
year, product was stored on shelving like you find in a garage, and orders
were filled from hand carried picking tickets by Spanish (mostly from
Argentina- Hola Mirta!) workers pulling from the shelves into various sizes of
cardboard boxes. They sat down with their box-full at a folding 4X8 table and
reviewed the order. Another person would finish packing the order with Styrofoam
peanuts (which I replaced with biodegradable starch and recycled paper
fillers, ), tape, weigh and label it for shipping.
.It
wasn't all roses however. In 1993, just 12 days after making the *first
payment* on our new home, Arbonne laid me off. Two weeks later, they laid off
my wife. and about a third of their staff. The California recession of 1993
had arrived.
