A day with Theresa Daniels

For Theresa Daniels, a typical day in the office means working with a truly diverse team of colleagues – and eating lunch with four members of her own family. The Supply Chain Analyst is part of the Supply Chain Management department in Germantown, Maryland, where her working day begins at around 9 a.m. following a 25-mile car commute.

After checking emails for any urgent inquiries, Theresa begins her day by running routine reports. “I do a standing order report for the US to make sure we have enough stock to cover the next four weeks,” she explains. “Other days I do stock-out reports and a contract order report with reservations to make sure we’re not holding too much stock.”

Her other daily tasks include demand planning, and coordinating stock production with shipments and product deliveries. However, Theresa’s main focus is far from routine: she deals with ‘special orders’ requested either directly by customers or via the Sales and Customer Care teams.

“We are the largest Special Order market in the company. The term ‘special orders’ covers anything that requires extra special handling,” she says, adding that some clients require items to be customized whilst others may require unusual volumes of certain products or items with a minimum shelf life.

No matter how complex each Special Order may be, Theresa does everything possible to ensure that the desired products are shipped to customers on time. Some things are too complex for email

She works closely with Idriss Belkheiri, Senior Specialist Production Planning, based in Hilden, Germany. Most of their communication is via email – but there are times when a telephone call is more efficient. “Idriss and I have a standing call every Thursday morning at 9 a.m. EST because some things are just too complex for email. This is for us to touch base so things are understood,” Theresa says.

Back in Germantown, Theresa’s immediate team of five people is extremely diverse: each member hails from a different country. “We have one Taiwanese, one German, one Brazilian, one Puerto Rican and myself. It is actually great working in this kind of environment. We definitely all have different strengths and we get along really well,” she says.

Working for such an international company as QIAGEN presents the occasional challenge. According to Theresa, the time difference with Germany can make it hard to answer questions immediately.

“We know that at 7 p.m. EST there’s probably nobody in Germany who can answer, so we have to wait until the next morning,” she says. “Sometimes it’s frustrating but that’s the nature of global business nowadays. The biggest challenge is not so much the actual communication when it happens but having to wait for it to happen.”

There are no such challenges during Theresa’s lunch break. That’s a time when she can be found either eating with her team – or with four members of her own family. The reason? “I have two sisters and their husbands who all work for QIAGEN in Maryland. So If I’m not eating with my team I’m eating with my big sisters and their husbands,” Theresa laughs.