EMEA Supply Chain Services Placement Student Review

During your time with the Cummins, I have been given the chance to rotate between 4 teams, spending an average on 3 months in each of them. This allowed me to see the end-to-end process in a supply chain, which is the same for every company in any industry. The first team that you will be part of is the Order to Cash team, which deals directly with our customers. Members of this team will take care of processing costumer’s orders and dealing with any query. Thereafter, I moved to the Plan to build, which deals with the other end of the supply chain, the suppliers. Planners’ role is of leasing with all Cummins’ external and internal suppliers, sending them orders of parts needed to manufacture our products, taking into consideration present and future demand, manufacturing, and shipping lead times, and many more things. My third rotation was with the Source to Pay team, which it is divided into direct and indirect teams, In this team I have worked alongside the purchasing team to make sure pricing between suppliers and Cummins match and also take care of the introduction of new supplier in our supply chain. The final team you will be taking part of is Quality, where I made sure the are no issues with the quality of our supply chain, in order to maintain it smooth. This means dealing with problems straight away and making sure procedures are created and followed by all teams. Moreover, towards the end of my experience with Cummins I have taken the lead on a project. During this project I worked in close contact with 3 directors of the company and I have leased with over 300 internal stakeholders.

During my time at Cummins I have improved the following skills: Communication and customer focus, as I was in constant talks with suppliers, customers, and different level of internal stakeholders. Organization, Teamwork, Leading and Time Management - I have developed those skills thanks to different tasks, but leading my own project allowed me to put all those skills to use. Working independently, taking the initiative, and Result drive are other 3 skills that I have improved throughout my experience as there were periods where was not a high workload and I had to give myself targets to meet and qualifications to achieve.

As I took part in 4 different teams during my placement, I have been given different levels of responsibilities by each of them. In some of them I had the same responsibilities and goals as the other members of the teams. In other I was given less to none responsibilities, which, in my opinion, was caused by the absence of a structure for the role of a placement. The moment I was given the most responsibility is when I took part in a project which eventually was left to me to lead.

During my placement I received a lot of support from both my colleagues and my manager. My line manager has done all that was in her power to support and guide me during my time within the company and has allowed me to understand how a great manager should behave with new entries. However, I had a bad experience with the manager of one of the teams as he did not provided the level of guidance and support that was requested by me and my line manager until the last week of my staying in his team.

The culture and atmosphere within Cummins is great as it makes you feel part of a family from day 1. A very positive note is the culture of developing internal talent and giving them growth opportunities.

I personally I have enjoy me placement to some extends. I am grateful for learning how a supply chain works and what is involved in it, and for understating what I would and wouldn't like to do in my future career. However, the roles that I have done in the 12 months can be described as very repetitive and not challenging. Moreover, there have been many times/days were I did not have any work/activity/course to do and I would end up doing nothing. Therefore, I there have been many moment when I did not enjoy my work - probably related to the fact that I am a person who is always looking for challenges and ways to improve himself.

Yes

Cummins is a great company to work for, as there are many benefit to working with them. However, Make sure you truly understand what the role that you are applying for includes.