Work on supply chain management at Evonik industry

Within my Management Engineering study I am interested in supply chain and logistic topic. It was a great opportunity for me to do these 7 months internship in Germany within Evonik industry. This thesis is based on the internship at the Technology Engineering – Supply Chain division. This work focuses on the optimization of the sub-process in supply chain management. Which includes developing analytic tools, developments and recommendations are provided in the report of overall strategic decision process. The technology engineering department is divided into two topic team: supply chain consulting team, 6- sigma team, I was allocated in supply chain team giving my master study contents and my future career plan. At the beginning of my internship, my main task in the team was to assist the supply chain consulting member to finalize the project report they have been doing, collect useful information from industry whitepaper and support the project optimization report. Later on I also assisted on the delivery performance KPIs and 6 sigma- China curriculum change management on the culture issue. In this project report I will mainly describe and make summary of two main jobs among them: 1: Work on optimization report: The supply chain team mainly works on project basis, which means they work on all the optimization topic and training or curriculum for different site and business unit (later refer as BU) within Evonik global. The process usually starts with understanding the customers’ main supply chain processes, collect data, analysis data, conduct interview, providing possible solution, and provide continuous plan. 3 2: Work on supply chain and 6-sigma China curriculum: The training and curriculum which will be given to China Evonik in 2014 is based on the success project that always done in Germany and America, the requirement for China is to adapt the change management, consider the supply chain environment and economic situation in China, combine with the cultural, justify the training contents accordingly. At the beginning of the internship I had set several learning goals regarding the improvement of knowledge and skills on supply chain and logistic topics and also soft skill of working in an international environment. These goals made my internship position a valuable work experience. The objectives are: Objective 1: Understand critical process in supply chain in a worldwide trade company. Objective 2: Learning basic sub-process in supply chain operation. Objective 3: Understand basic principles and concepts of European supply chain. Objective 4: Understand the different parties that involved. Objective 5: Understand the supply chain trading issues between European and China. In conclusion, the internship was a very useful experience. I have find out what my strengths and weaknesses are; I gained new knowledge and skills and met many new people. I achieved many of my learning goals, however for some the conditions did not permit to achieve them, as I wanted. (Due to the project language limit, part of the project is required in German language, and some was limit for intern to authorized to work on the confidential data) 4 I got insight into the work of supply chain consulting. The financing of projects is an important factor and forces to be flexible in attitude and approach. I learned more about the new trends in the supply chain process in global and the risks that are facing. Working together with the different nationality coworker and learn the different mindset of same topic in different country. There is still a lot to discover and research methods can be improved. At last this internship has given me new insights and motivation to pursue a career in supply chain and logistic abroad. To prepare myself for my future career I can improve several things. I can work on my communication skills so that I am able to present and express myself more confidently. I could perform certain tasks in research better if I have more experience in the research methodologies applied in supply chain.