AvantGarde

First year at IIT Kanpur (MBA) concluded with an internship opportunity at Anand Group in Supply Chain Domain.

First day was great at BEHR India, Pune (Anand Group Company). It all started with an interaction with the HR manager. She discussed about the company, expectations from me as an intern etc. Later, I met my reporting manager who is also the head of Supply Chain Management. He was very supportive right since starting. He gave me one week & asked the production head to allow me to visit the production lines, dock area, warehouse & study the current scenario at the company.

So finally I started with visits to the shop floor (HVAC & Engine cooling components manufacturing), interacting with the heads of various departments to understand the processes related to the products and also the problems company was facing at that time.

In the first week, I did thorough data collection and presented my observations related to the best practices, improvements required and the missing links. The main problems (missing links) defined in the whole procedure were:

1) Downtime at production line due to excessive time taken for line feeding, primarily due to the child parts coming from the warehouse.

2) The number of bins coming in from the suppliers was not equal to the number of bins moving out back to the suppliers.

Based on these missing links I was finally assigned a projects on which I was supposed to work.
1) Warehouse Sectioning Management
2) Empty Bins & Gibbos Management

My guide’s exact words were “I am banking on you, I have some plans for the company Supply chain & I want you to work on it & implement it”.

While pursuing MBA one always dreams about Air conditioned chambers to work, giving orders to sub-ordinates, etc. But after joining the company I learned that reality is much more than that. I found myself working at the stores & dock area near production line (thanks to the Pune weather, I enjoyed working at shop floor).

The project Methodology involved:
1) Observing Material Flow
2) Observing Information Flow
3) Noting the procedures involved in material handling & dispatch
4) Pilot Implementation
5) Total Implementation

I studied the possible causes for the deviations & suggested warehouse sectioning. For me it was a great task to do as also it involved SAP. After a thorough analysis and discussions, company finally accepted my proposal & allowed me to execute the same. I started to work on this project & by the end of one month I was able to do a lot of work. I designed the layout & implemented the plan for warehouse & SAP.

After the success of my first project I was allotted another project. Now for this second project, I had to prepare numerous layouts (kudos to our Production & Operations Management lessons @ IIT Kanpur) covering the areas right from the shop floor to dock yard (loading & unloading).

As time progressed I was told about the visit of the Head HR, Anand Group to the company for our final presentation. It was really great to know that company showed immense faith & interest in me. I gave him the final presentation of the work I did. He was really happy to see the work done by me.

Besides work it was great working at the place. I was part of all the meetings that were held weekly in the company & was always encouraged to speak & give ideas in the meeting. Besides that as per my orientation towards finance I always grabbed every opportunity to meet finance department people in order to know about the financial work involved with the project implementation and in general.

I had an awesome time applying the theoretical knowledge I had learned at IIT in the company. I enjoyed these two months away from scorching heat of Delhi & am looking forward for PPO/PPI opportunity at the company.

Tarun Goel

MBA Batch of 2013