Because the company doesn't have a master table to track the real-time progress of work orders, we have to check each work order one by one. We can only see the quantity for the next process, and to see the output quantity we have to sum them up ourselves. Checking one or two is fine, but with dozens of work orders, looking through them one by one is enough to make you faint. So a long time ago I said I thought we needed a master overview table, which led to proposing a system dashboard project. But it got stuck for a full two months. At first the supervisor said he would handle it for me, so he wrote the initial content and requirements. But almost every meeting it got rejected by ITS and other units or questioned, so the progress kept stalling. Later, the more I looked at it the more I felt the direction was off, even a bit derailed, so I told the supervisor I'd just organize it myself.
This dashboard is something I understand the needs for best, after all I'm the one using it every day and suffering through it every day. I know which information is most lacking, which things affect work efficiency the most, and what kind of screen and logic I actually want to see. It's just that I was really too busy to find time to work on it, until this project had already gone over two months and my workload happened to ease up a bit, so I decided to do it myself.
So I spent time reorganizing the entire process, requirement logic, and field purposes according to my usual work habits. I went through the content myself first, then threw it to AI to check the wording and structure. After repeated revisions, I had already shown the complete content to the supervisor two weeks ago.
As a result, he kept saying he would schedule a meeting to discuss, but the meeting never happened. Every time at the production control weekly meeting, when the plant manager asked "Does this project actually have any progress now?" the atmosphere in the room would get awkward again. Later I really couldn't take it anymore and directly told the supervisor: "I think I'll just show it to ITS myself first. I can revise it faster myself, otherwise this thing really will drag on forever."
Yesterday I went straight to the ITS contact to help confirm the content first. After looking at it, the other person straightforwardly replied: "This is fine, just submit the application."
When I went back and told the supervisor that ITS said there were no issues and it could be submitted, he actually replied: "I think someone is helping you."
I was completely baffled at that moment.
The logic, requirements, distance descriptions, and process content of this project were almost all organized by me line by line. I only used AI to polish and check. Yet the person who had been getting rejected kept seeing the case finally able to move forward and their first reaction wasn't "Great, there's finally progress," but thinking someone was helping me.
It's not that I can't accept others being better than me, but sometimes some supervisors subconsciously interpret their subordinates' achievements as "someone must have assisted," instead of believing the other person actually has the ability to get things done. But on the other hand, many things really are faster if you jump in and handle them yourself rather than waiting for someone else to save you. At least now this thing that had been stuck for two months has finally started moving.