I remember sitting on the eight floor of the Brigade Magnum Building the same way I remember my first day of college and school: excited, anxious, but out of place as if I didn’t belong. More than being tensed, I was energetically sitting tight for the 3
rd April with umpteen excitement and vitality to set out on my part as a summer intern at one of the most valuable brands in the world. With high expectations, I entered the very secured and holy passageways of HCCB.
The Coca-Cola experience started with the 3-day induction program where heads of different departments briefed us about the company operations and took up our queries. The program included visits to two of the company’s plant which gave us an overview of the bottling process.
After this, all of us were sent to our respective locations. My project was in Dasna, Ghaziabad which was one of the biggest bottling plants which HCCB operated in India. The first day in the plant, I was made aware of the criticality of the project for the plant by the Factory Manager and later that day, the HR Head of the plant conveyed me about the expectations from me relating to the project which made me serious about the project from the day one.
I was to work on increasing the productivity of the casual labour involved in the various activities of the plant and finally had to give out a plan as to how productivity can be increased in diverse departments and how much of labour intake can be reduced by the way of automation, kaizen initiatives, process improvement or historical practice changes. The project required me to understand operations of all the departments and then conduct a study of each activity performed in the departments.
I had to carry out a time-motion study for all the activities which had involvement of manual labour. This was done in order to come up with a proper number for the hiring of labour on day to day basis. Just to mention here, I come from a Commerce background and had no idea of how to conduct a time-motion study which straight away put me out of comfort zone as there were no HR concepts which would be used in the project which I had studied in last one year. Also, I had to look for the technology which was being used in other plants or industries to carry out similar activities and then talk to vendors for getting the quotations so that a proper cost-benefit analysis can be presented.
Amid this, there were a series of challenges which I faced. I had arrived at recommendations based on my study, making these recommendations executable on the ground was a hurdle I was yet to cross. With the help of stakeholders, I was able to successfully arrive at solutions that would make the last mile delivery of my recommendations a possibility.
To help us through our project, we were assigned Guides and I was fortunate enough to get a guide who took real interest in the project and used to take out time to sit with me considering the fact that those two months are very busy for the business and all the employees as it is the season time. He was a constant support as he would sit for a long duration to discuss out the findings and give the suggestions accordingly.
The last part of the internship was the ‘Final Presentation’. I wasn’t really nervous about the presentation as before that I had presented about the project a lot many times and had faced shooting of questions at me. The presentation went well although I couldn’t present all of my recommendations because of a paucity of time then the panel appreciated the depth of my study.
In all, I thoroughly enjoyed the two months at HCCB in which I learned a lot of new things. I loved stepping out of my comfort zone and the challenge of working on something which was not related to what I had studied till now. Now looking back at the experience, I would recall the organisation as really fast-paced and one which looks out for ‘Changemakers’. And about the HR department, it is not just a facilitator but a decision-maker and drives change which is something I had seen in very fewer organisations till now.