My Goal to Build a Career in Industrial Engineering

I grew up in a city which has a lot of heavy industries manufacturing steel, petroleum products and a port too in Visakhapatnam, India. I still remember watching “How it is Made” program in Discovery channel. These helped me to think in manufacturing perspective and how to make things simpler. The industrial revolution has made huge advancements in all the sectors since ages. Since few decades, with the invent of automation, this Industrial revolution is named as Industry 4.0.

In the 21th century, there is a tremendous impact in the advancements of technology which changed the manufacturing process with the implementation of Robots, AI, Industrial Automation, and 3D Printing. The crave for learning more about technologies and manufacturing products had driven me to learn a lot about these concepts and issues concerning the industries landed me in my undergrad as a Industrial Engineering. I had attained my under graduation from GITAM UNIVERSITY, one of the premier engineering institutions in Visakhapatnam (India).

I graduated as a Bachelors of Technology in Industrial Engineering. I always had interest towads algorithms which I had been introduced with the Operations subject which pulled my interest towards solving business problem. The well articulated curriculum helped me learn about various subjects with applicability in any industry such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Manufacturing, Material Management, Operations Research, Total Quality Control, Reliability, Process Re-engineering and Supply Chain Management, which constitute in the basic operations of a Manufacturing or a Service Industry. Introduction to the above courses urged me to pursue my internship in manufacturing sector. During my summer internship at “Bhilai Steel Plant” which is the oldest Steel manufacturing industry and which is India’s First and main steel rail producer. The internship in such a prestigious company had given me a great industrial exposure in the Industrial Department. During my 4-week training, I got a chance to learn about SAP MM module and supply chain of a department. By interacting with technical people gained exposure about some manufacturing process, detailed specification and working of furnaces, various preventive and scheduled maintenance practices, how to meet the demand during shut down applied over a huge variety of manufacturing products. Observed the implementation of various TQM techniques, Just-In-Time, 5S practices.

After my internship in this plant, I had undergone a second internship in “Vizag steel plant”, which is one of the youngest steel manufactures. I had gained in-depth knowledge in Medium Merchant & Structural mill unit. Here I had learned about various rolling, turning, cooling process in manufacturing. As this is the youngest plant I got a chance to learn about the latest technologically advanced machinery and process. With this exposure to manufacturing practices made me do a final year project using both the experience gained in the industry and various optimization techniques to find the most optimal conditions of various parameters affected during manufacturing. The exposure attained during my internship made me to think about optimizing various factors involved during manufacturing such as material removal rate, forces effecting cutting tool etc. inclined me towards research and find the optimum conditions. With this curiosity worked on a project in my final year titled “Optimization of Surface Roughness, Material Removal Rate and Cutting Forces in Turning Al356.2 Alloy using Taguchi Technique”. The project was emphasized by eliminating the repetitive experiments, effective material removal rate in optimized time for the alloy. In this project, our team worked from preparing the alloy and molding into a cylindrical rod to finally using a Center lathe in turning the metal rod. Through this project, I had gained the real-time experience of manufacturing a product and collecting data related to various cutting parameters and analyzing the data using MINITAB 17 software which in turn brought me to learn about this application. This helped me to provide a detailed analysis of the complex solution by validating the results using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the percentage of contribution of each parameter.

Upon completing my undergrad, I started to work for a multinational organization Accenture Solution Pvt. Ltd. for around 26 months as a Quality Assurance Analyst with the domain knowledge in Capital Markets and Financial services. Tough working in a software industry, which did not put any limitations in applying my skills attained during my undergrad. I worked for various roles started from analyzing the requirements to delivering the quality product without any defect leakage in it. I must prepare the data sets used for testing the quality which include both positive and negative scenarios. This helped me to implement the skills attained gained from subjects like quality control, data sampling tools and methodologies Applied various process improvement techniques by implementing Hybrid Agile techniques which are most suited for the service industry, which resulted in a significant decrease in the idle time between development and testing and helped me in delivering the quality results with better productivity. I had driven a team of three towards automation of the tool using JAVA and Selenium which in turn eliminated the repetitive tasks from 10 days to 4 days and improved the process and resource utilization. Projects handled by my team enabled me efficiently to build up my leadership skills. I would continuously use all of my professional experience that I have attained since the past 2 years in a way so that it benefits me towards my graduate studies.

I had acquired various skills like Minitab, ARENA (Simulation), ANSYS, Auto-CAD, C and C++ enhanced both analyzing and programming skills. One of the members in organizing “Optimization Reinvented” event organized by Industrial Engineering Department advanced my managing skills. Very well versed in a lot of industry tools used for automation during my work at Accenture. Tools like Selenium for automation, SQL for data retrieval and many project management tools HP ALM, Data extraction ETL tools. Actively participated in delivering classroom presentations on Supply Chain, Plant Layout and Project Management techniques. Being a member in National Service Scheme (N.S.S) Participated in Beach Cleaning Programme as a part of Swatch Bharat program initiated by our Prime Minister held at Visakhapatnam and a member in ISTE (Indian Society for Technical Education).

It is well known that one of the true values of Industrial Engineering lies in optimizing the process either in service or manufacturing industry to improve the quality and productivity by minimizing the utilization of man power, time and money. Optimizing the utilization of resources play a vital role in 21th century and in future which can be achieved by Industrial engineers. Having the corporate experience and the knowledge gained during my undergrad opened up my eyes in gaining more domain and technical knowledge with the practical implementation using the industry renowned tools in the Industrial engineering stream. This can be best achieved from masters program to enhance my skills and attain in depth knowledge along with exposure to the industry advancements. I had a strong inclination towards Operations Research, Process Improvement, Supply Chain and Industrial Analytics subjects which are available in Concordia University.

Higher education would enhance my skills and drive my career in a research-oriented in my field of interest. I am anxious to continue my study under the guidance of renowned / prominent faculties at Concordia University. With continuously working in the lab will develop confidence and real-time experience to students. Great equipment in the Human factors lab allows me to perform the analysis of sensor data collected by connecting the human to software. With the use of various Operations Research software’s from the ruling market leaders Such as IBM CPLEX in executing computational experiments and many more, these will help me in learning and keeps me updated with the emerging market trends. Industry renowned faculties, their area of research, publications their global exposure in a broad range of subjects like Operations research, Supply chain, Logistics, and Transportation. These courses will bolster me to achieve my career goals and interests in this field. I learned a lot from the research work in Transportation and logistics, Operations research, warehouse and distribution management by Professor Ivan Contreras. Some of his research papers like “Two-level lot-sizing with raw-material perishability and deterioration” and “Solving the optimum communication spanning tree problem” made me acquire the knowledge from this professor. I thus believe that a graduate program in Industrial engineering at the Concordia University will help me to enhance my skills and attain a good exposure to business cases globally.

Considering the courses offered and diligent research in the web, I found that your University has an expert faculty who can train and guide enthusiastic students who are more interested to broaden their knowledge in specific fields. Stated my exposure, proficiency, and interest in the subject, I believe I would be able to make a significant contribution to the program. With all the skills and experience in my industry and project experience as a requisite through which I would be able to contribute towards my learning and providing better solutions to the market. I thus believe I will be able to adapt well to the master’s program and excel at it with passion.

Finally, I take this opportunity to thank you for enabling me to express myself.