Starting this week, Herding Cats will be posting introductory pages in each of the categories to provide some framework for each topic as well as the language that will be used in this blog to discuss it. All of these posts can be found in the Introduction category as well as their own home category.

In terms of terminology, in order to adopt at least one degree of separation from former employment, I’ll be using a set of analogies to refer to the company by name, by process, and by place in the industry. All of the names in this blog will be changed; many of them may not even be consistent, although for certain key players, they’ll be called out in relation to my positions. Nowhere in this blog will there be any confidential or proprietary information about my previous career; I am simply adopting this set of vocabulary out of respect for the individuals I worked with, the sites I worked on, and the company who gainfully employed me and developed my career for almost 15 years.

Because I’m discussing a technical, internationally owned mechanical and production company, I’ve chosen the analogy of making donuts, if donuts were things that came off of assembly lines in large quantities to be sold by retailers to individuals. The parent company’s name is YoSaffBridge Donuts, and is one of the major donut suppliers in the world; YoSaffBridge is made up of a subset of LLCs who are all controlled under an executive board I will be calling Yolanda Executives, stationed in a country that is not the USA. The branch of the company operating in the US with its own internal decision-making board will be called Saffron Donuts, in charge of producing donuts for the Americas and working with other international LLCs. In this analogy, the final piece becomes Bridget Flour, a somewhat strangely subsidiary LLC owned within the complicated YoSaffBridge structure, whose business is production of the specialty flour Saffron Donuts and many parts of YoSaffBridge use to make their donuts.

Within my career, I’ve held a number of positions within this conglomerate company — and also, the hierarchy has changed, which is something I’ll touch on severely within the international business section. The official position titles include:

• Research Process Engineer & Project Leader for YoSaffBridge Center for Research & Development, a facility housed in the USA but controlled financially and administratively by the board of Yolanda Executives
• Plant / Operations / Maintenance / Engineering Manager at the Pilot Plant for Bridget Flour (there were a number of reorganizations during my time in this position, making it a more exciting period than expected)
• Senior Flour Scientist / Engineer at the Technical Center for R&D for Saffron Donuts, part of a department meant to bridge fundamental R&D from the Research Department and making it easily understandable, technically useful, and aligned with business strategy for Saffron Donuts.

This list of vocabulary and concept explanation will be modified as needed as this blog grows and additional clarification is needed. Tags should enable readers to find related posts which should help give context to the designations as well.