Suggested analysis and inquiries for an internship on “Production” related topics

A production internship must be fulfilled in a manufacturing organization. Even if the intern does not take place in manufacturing activities directly, she/he must apply contents of the production related courses offered in the BU IE department.

An intern should be working in one of the following areas for an acceptable internship in production: process analysis, production planning and control, scheduling, manufacturing planning and control, inventory management, quality control, supply chain applications, logistics, experience in ERP software for production planning and control purposes (other than simple data entry type activities), product development.

During the internship period, an intern may focus on the following types of analysis and questions. You do not have to answer all the questions in the list.

• Provide an overview of the production system (what are the resources, inputs, and
  constraints?)
• Provide a process chart of a major product and/or subassembly
• Provide the routing for a group of products, along with manufacturing
  technologies used.
• How the capacity of production is measured and calculated? What is the
  efficiency of the production processes?
• How you can categorize of production processes in the internship organization?
  Are they continuous, discrete, job shop, flow shop, project shop, MTO, ATO, a
  combination of these, etc.?
• Provide the layout of the internship organization. How you can categorize the
  layout of the organization? (Process layout, product layout, cellular, etc.)
  • Describe the material handling system used
  • Describe the warehousing system used
  • Discuss the effectiveness of the existing layout together with the
    material handling and warehousing systems
• Discuss the forecasting activities in the company, purposes of forecasting, and the forecasting methods that the company uses. What are the sources of data? What sort of mathematical models are used? What is the computer support in forecasting activities?
• Production planning activities
  • Who makes decisions on what and how much to produce?
  • How are these decisions made?
  • How can these decisions be improved?
  • How the company allocates resources (key personnel, capital, land,
    material, supplies, etc.) for production planning activities?
  • Is there ERP software used in the company?
• Inventory planning activities
  • Define major items of inventory by their function.
  • What are the reasons for holding inventories?
  • What would happen if inventories are not carried?
  • What types of inventory control policies are used?
• Resource allocation and detailed scheduling activities
  • Explain the detailed scheduling activities?
  • What sort of decision aids (computerized or otherwise) are used for
    detailed scheduling?
  • What are the performance measures used for detailed scheduling and short
    term resource allocation?
• Discuss planning activities for inbound and outbound logistics in the company
• Discuss manufacturing technologies (JIT, CIM, FMS, GT, CAD/CAM) used in
  the company
• Quality planning and control activities
  • Explain how the internship organization defines quality for a chosen group of products
  • Describe the quality control activities throughout the life cycle of that
    product group
  • Describe preventive quality assurance activities in the internship
    organization
  • Describe statistical quality control activities in the internship organization

Suggested analysis and inquiries for an internship on “IT” related topics

An Information Technologies (IT) internship must be fulfilled in an IT department of a preferably large service or manufacturing organization, or in a company whose main function is to provide IT service. An intern should be working in one of the following areas for an acceptable internship in IT: network installation and administration, system installation and administration, hardware installation, web design, software development. An intern may be working on Microsoft Project or Access type applications, if their activities go beyond data entry type simple tasks. Depending on the internship organization worked, an e-commerce type project will be regarded as either an IT internship of General internship.

During the internship period, an intern may focus on the following types of analysis and questions. You do not have to answer all the questions in the list.

• What are typical IT related decisions made and what are their relevance to company activities?
• How IT activities support management decisions and planning?
• Which IT activities (hardware and software related) support strategic, tactical, and
  operational level decisions?
• Please provide a detailed description of the IT hardware and software
  infrastructure in the internship organization (network, workstations, computers,
  operating system, major application programs, etc.)
• What are the major data types recorded and processed?
• Name a few application programs for enterprise wide applications: ERP, stock
  keeping, accounting, etc. Discuss the level of decisions supported by these
  applications. Give an example of what is performed based on that specific
  software.

Suggested analysis and inquiries for an internship on “General IE” related topics

In a “General IE” internship, you are expected to work in a service industry, such as healthcare, finance, transportation, telecommunication, consultancy, tourism, or in a manufacturing industry with a focus on non-manufacturing related activities, such as marketing, investment planning, operations planning, project management, business reengineering and benchmarking, human resources, human factors analysis. An extended internship duration in “Production” or “IT” will also count towards your General IE internship.

Students can work in a governmental or non-governmental organization (NGO) for their General IE internship, where industrial engineering tools and techniques mentioned in the guidelines above would apply. The duration of a NGO internship can be at most 15 days. Please contact with the Internship Coordinator of the department for approval before a NGO internship.