Internships are a valuable way for students to perform hands-on work and gain insight into their career of interest. Most internships provide a sense of value through the practice and completion of meaningful work, however, that is not always the case. Some firms struggle to consistently give their interns work that will actually make an impact at a company-wide level, which in turn hurts both the company and the intern. I’m happy to say that this has not been the case during my Transportation Strategy Internship with Tyson Foods. I have spent countless hours working on various projects that have not only made an impact on the company right now, but will continue to do so in the future. Listed below are some of the most notable projects that I helped develop and why they were beneficial to both me and Tyson.
- Business Plans - One of the first things I began working on when I started my internship was creating, editing, and deleting business plans. These plans were paramount to the day to day operations of our logistics department as they allowed our third party vendors to know all the details regarding their deliveries such as the freight amount, origin and destination, delivery date, and priority. Creating these plans involved deep analysis and they were often time sensitive. Furthermore, being able to implement these plans showed me how important an efficient operations team is for a business to be successful.
- SOP - SOP, otherwise known as “Standard Operating Procedure,” was another project I was tasked with early on in my internship. For those that don’t know, an SOP is a set of step-by-step instructions to help employees within a specific role carry out daily activities. I was tasked by my supervisors to create SOPs for both Load Planner’s and Load Builder's that not only had step-by-step instructions, but also detailed information relevant to the job, Supply Chain Department, and Tyson as a whole. Due to it being such a detailed document, creating these reports was no easy task. It required me to meet with and shadow numerous staff members already in the role and perform extensive research on other important metrics. While they took a while to complete, I am proud to say that my SOPs have already been implemented by the company and will continue to be used by new hires. As for myself, I really enjoyed working on these reports as it allowed me to see other areas of the Supply Chain Department outside of the strategy team, giving me a better understanding of how Tyson’s logistics department operates at such a high level.
- Plant Location Map - One of the largest and most time consuming projects I was tasked with was to create a live, interactive map that shows the location of all Tyson’s plants throughout the United States. This project ended up taking much longer than I anticipated and required extensive amounts of data analysis, data sorting, and collaboration with other teams. From the creation of this map, Tyson was able to send my completed version to all departments company wide where they could then fine tune it to their liking. This project was very beneficial to my personal growth as it taught me how to source and configure data to my liking and use technology such as PowerBi and Palantir. It was also the first large-scale project that I was able to oversee from start to finish.
- RFP - The largest and most impactful project I was able to work on was the implementation of an RFP (Request for Proposal). This was Tyson’s second RFP in the past 5 years and turned out to be the most successful one in company history, resulting in industry leading metric rates and millions of dollars in savings. Leading up to the RFP’s “Go Live” date involved an extensive amount of preparation in the organization, communication, and automation with our data processes and vendor proposals/responses. Being able to collaborate on something so beneficial to the company was an unforgettable experience and allowed me to work on real-time supply chain scenarios.
