Page 9 - PPO Diaries

PPO Diaries

This is where the real challenge lies to manage the data according to the project needs.

Other challenges I faced include understanding the culture, values and ways of thinking of the employees at the
company. Many a times I started on the wrong foot due to misunderstanding. It will take a couple of days to
finally get in sync and then things got along smoothly for all. Since everyone is not expected to be on the same
page and have the same understanding of your work, it will be a challenge to make people understand and
realise about the importance, effect and results of your project to the company.

❖ What did you do right and what did you do wrong?

Let’s start with the wrong and end it on a “right” note. Getting into a whole new organisation with their
own culture and ways of working can be quite confusing to an intern, and so was it for me. There were
multiple occasions in my project where I failed to communicate my problems and needs to my mentor or
to the other employees as I had in mind. This kind of miscommunication had led to a lot of re-work and
unnecessary issues during the internship. Once I had failed to convey to my mentor that the magnitude of
project deliverables expected from me for 2 months is more than possible. As a result, my mentor had
expectations initially that I was fine with it only to understand after couple of weeks that it was indeed a
burden in such a short span and had to clip it down. The additional work I had to do in those few weeks
became irrelevant to the other part of my project which I could have easily assigned for doing some
productive work for the project before. Hence, from my mistakes I must advise you all to gauge how much
of the project is doable by you and inform the authorities straight away rather than falter on it later and
make a disappointment to them.

Moving on to the right thing now, the first part of my project required me to devise an inventory model.
My mentor expected me to automate the whole model with codes so that no one was to get involved in
the intricacies of the working of the model and get the result straightway. Now in any internship the main
catch is to understand what the company wants the most and what is going to make them crazy.
Automating the entire cumbersome model was a difficult task but I put added efforts to finally come up
with it. I did take help from all sources available, invested all my efforts into that and finally presented the
automation which was the cherry on top for the project. That automation added the novelty and
usefulness to the project that was needed in the company. Previously inventory was decided based on
consensus and mutual agreement, but the new automated model gave a different dimension which was
appreciated immensely as that was the need of the hour. This was the right thing I realised and pulled out
at the right time to make the project a successful one. It might be quite simple for a student to code
complex models but one must understand from the company point of view, that it might be useful and not
that easy for the company hence any contribution towards that direction would add flavour to the project,
and that is what one must understand and work upon.

❖ what are the things to keep in mind in the internship?

Firstly, an intern must be well versed with the basic supply chain and operations knowledge, because
that’s what is expected from a NITIEzen. A good understanding of SCM will definitely help one to know
the context of the problem and devise solutions for it. Secondly, an intern must be proficient in PEW –

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