Every day I spent an average of 8-9 hours on Microsoft Excel. My love of numbers helped me a lot in doing this. Apart from gaining proficiency in data analytics, the internship taught me complete ‘order management cycle’ of retail channel. It gave me glimpse of the complicated yet fascinating retail sector. Though I did intern in supply chain department but I got a hands-on experience in sales, marketing, merchandising and finance. I also spent a brief amount of time in warehouses, understanding order processing and warehouse management system. In every weekly review with senior management, I could see myself evolving in terms of knowledge, communication skills and mostly as a person.
To come up with the solutions I had to refer to many secondary sources and publications related to fill-rate issues and order management. Later on, this extensive research helped to publish my own paper in SIBM-B research magazine. So that was another good thing happened with me because of the internship.
At the end of my internship, I presented solutions to improve fill rate of modern trade which was backed up by process gap analysis, cost benefit analysis etc. In one of the solution I built macro based ‘Dynamic safety stock model’. Other one was process improvement based on the principles of CPFR. My recommendations were highly appreciated by Director and founder of Wildcraft. And they have been implemented in the end too.
Summer internship is a great way to apply your learnings of one year of management education. It gives you great insights into the corporate future. One should be all absorbing during this experience and should not limit learnings to a specific domain only. Grab every single opportunity of having fun, of collaborating, learning, excelling and you will come out as a better version of you after internship.
About the author:
The author’s name is Rasika Wanganekar, a second year operations student at SIBM Bengaluru. Rasika belongs to beautiful and serene Konkan region of Maharashtra. She is a mechanical engineer from University of Pune. After her graduation she chose to work in challenging sector of manufacturing, working on shop floor of Mahindra’s Scorpio assembly plant. This unusual career choice gave her lots of real insights into manufacturing and operations world.
Rasika is an avid reader, permanent foodie and loves practicing yoga.
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