My Internship Experience at Nestle Lanka PLC,

By Nishantha Fernando

On 03/10/2009

At Career Development Camp,

University of Moratuwa

Good morning,

All the representatives of industry,

Distinguished guests, all the staff members of transport & logistics Mgt Dep,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Another batch of TLMers is about to begin a journey, a journey of seeking confidence

and experience of professionalism.

I remember, about a year ago, I was participating this very career development camp, as a third
year student.

As I was sitting there, in the crowd, just like you, I had many concerns and questions
about the training experience I was about to get. In general, I was nervous about, whether my
years in lecture room, would not give enough ability to work effectively in the industry. I feared
that I would make mistakes because of lack of experience and felt little low.

And I worried about whether I will be a mismatch for the organizations culture which I
had no clear idea about.

Also I bothered about the responsibilities which will be given to me, would not be
enough or well defined, whether it has the weight to cultivate my talents.

I had so many questions and concerns, which were never expressed. But, here I am,
finished my training successfully and talking to you right now, about the training experience I
had gone through.
 I spent nearly 6 months as a trainee at Supply Chain Division of Nestle Lanka PLC,
which is a well known multinational company for food and beverages.

My colleague Yasas Sameera and I went through the training together. We started our
training in last year mid October and finished it in April this year. We spend our first 3 months at
Nestle Distribution Centre and factory at Pannala and remaining months at Nestle Head Office
Colombo.

Our training was mainly consisted of doing different projects. At Pannala our main
projects were on improving the transportation module of Nestlé’s and improvements for the
Distribution Centre operations.

When we were at Nestle Head Office we got involved in different types of projects that
covered different aspects of Supply Chain.

An internship or a training opportunity is extremely beneficial for TLM undergraduates

like us to get hands on expertise, because we can only learn to swim by swimming. You have to
get into the water. So in that sense, an internship experience can be of great value in developing
knowledge, competencies and skills

We received immense amount of cooperation during the training period. All the people at
Nestle were very supportive and helped us in great deal during the training period. They devoted
their time and experience on making our training a success. Most of them became good friends
of us and still we are communicating. Especially our training supervisor Mr. Sathiyenthra
Panchadcharam gave us enormous support, by always looking into our work, evaluating,
arranging training sessions and gave us opportunities to get involved. I know from my friends
who had gone through training in other organizations also had similar experience, we all
received good support from the industry.

Another prominent factor in our training period was inclusion. In order to maintain the
enthusiasm, passion that we started with, the opportunity to get involved was of great value. We
were not treated merely as trainers, but were given the chance to make contributions. We took
part in meetings, discussions field visits and events. It opened up a different dimension to our
training allowing us to explore more ground and motivated us to do more.
 In order to carry out the projects, we had to learn about different processes of Nestle and
we were given a good training about their processes. Since Nestle is a multinational company.
They have well defined processes and it helped us to expand our knowledge on areas like
demand and supply planning, production planning, purchasing, customer order processing and
delivery and so on.

Open lines of communication play a key role in overall effectiveness of a training program,
because proper guidance and feedback are valuable components of professional growth. We
were given challenging projects, but our supervisor Mr. sathiyaentra, Mr. sathi, as we used to call
him, was very open, so we had no problems in asking questions, expressing our concerns and
also getting feedback. Being open does not mean that sharing business secrets. But it is just that
helping us to understand the changing dynamics of today’s business world and also in our lives.
He was a mentor for us and he always entertained our ideas, useful or otherwise, with an open
mind.

I am very satisfied about the training I received at Nestle, not only because I got so much as I
was telling. I also got the opportunity to contribute towards the organization. We were able to
come up with many cost saving solutions and improvements especially in the areas of warehouse
management and distribution. Though we were lack of experience on the job, we could bring
new knowledge and more importantly new angles to look at existing processes and identify the
deficiencies and to improve them.

And we enjoyed our training so much, especially the time we spend at Pannala, away from
home, in a totally new environment. It was really exciting. We enjoyed the total package and still
want to get back.

All of my apprehensions that I mentioned at the beginning were relieved once engaged in the
training. There was nothing to be feared or concerned about. Having finished my training, now I
feel more confident about myself and my ability to survive and thrive in the industry. Yes it is
challenging, but we are up to the task.

So, if you ask me the question that what is the main learning’s of my training experience. The
answer would be the importance using common sense and human skills.
 How many times we hear that we should apply theories that we learn in business
environment. But many of us fail to do so at the beginning. So how can we bridge the gap? The
best way is to use our common sense. But often we hinder our common senses due to vast
amount of knowledge we have. We don’t listen well, we don’t see things as they are, and
ultimately we make things much more complex and difficult and put lot of effort to manage
them. Use of bit of common sense always make things easy and allows the application of robust
theories successfully on practical matters, the solutions will become obvious.

No matter what we talk about making things efficient and effective, finally it all comes
down to people. Sometimes it is amazing, how much supportive and insightful people are with us
when we approach them in the right manner. What I learnt is to be genuinely friendly with
everybody. Very often bright solutions are already with people, we just have to create an
environment conducive for them to come out with it.

This internship program developed by TLM is definitely is such an environment.

So I take this opportunity to thank all the industry partners of TLM who gave us the
opportunities & also for their continuing partnership with us.

I would like to thank to all the people who made their contributions in making our training so
wonderful. Especially to nestle vice president supply chain, Mr. Suren Jacob for the opportunity.
Actually we got the opportunity accidentally. We interviewed Mr. Jacob for a supply chain
survey and ended up getting opportunity to had training at Nestle. Very special thank goes to our
training supervisor Mr. Sathi, and to all those who at Nestle for everything they did to make it so
fantastic. I also like to thank our department for arranging this very useful program for us.

Finally, my dear friends, As you stand on the brink of moving into life beyond your lecture
room, always remember to get involved as much as possible and enjoy every bit of it, because
your training is a remarkable occasion, I have no doubt that you will rise to it!

Thank you