In just a couple of months, Shreya Mittal will receive her Master of Business Administration degree from the Weatherhead School of Management.
Between her course work, serving as president of the Weatherhead Women in Business student organization and director of professional development for the Graduate Student Council, she has also been gaining hands-on experience through a fellowship program with the 鈥撯搘hich supplies 25% of all the packaged cheese consumed in America.
鈥淭he experience has been exceptional,鈥 Mittal (pictured above) says. 鈥淭his is exactly the type of fellowship you want to do when you're on the verge of graduating.鈥
Mittal started the fellowship last semester as the assets scheduling and optimization intern, where she鈥檚 been aiding the operations team and reporting to the vice president of operations.
On a day-to-day basis the operators who work on the packaging machines need to know exactly how to schedule the types of cheeses that are getting processed and when鈥撯搕o avoid contamination. Mittal is exploring the use of a sequencing tool to help optimize the process, which is currently done manually.
鈥淭his is the place I can implement the knowledge I'm learning from my classes,鈥 Mittal says. 鈥淲hat I learned today in class, I can apply tomorrow at work.鈥
Mittal learned about the fellowship program through a workshop hosted by Weatherhead鈥檚 Office of Career Management.
鈥淭he Career Management Office is one of the best assets that we have,鈥 she says. 鈥淭he entire team is so prompt with helping out students and supporting them.鈥
Mittal is one of three Weatherhead students participating in the fellowship on site at the Great Lakes Cheese headquarters in Hiram, Ohio.
The company is in a growth period, which is what prompted the fellowship program, says Nicole Crews, senior manager of organization and talent development at Great Lakes Cheese.
鈥淚t required us to look at talent in a very different way, which is not just to go and recruit for talent, but to think about how we can develop talent through an experience with a really good university,鈥 Crews says. 鈥淲e already had a relationship with 星空传媒 [University] and to grow that partnership we decided to look at how we can bring in talent from the university to solve problems and drive solutions, with an idea that the talent can grow in a fellowship that we can potentially hire in a full-time position.鈥
Paridhi Maheshwari (pictured left), a second-year, master of supply chain management student, has been a demand planning analyst intern at Great Lakes Cheese since last semester. She follows the seasonal demand and trends for the products, and predicts how the items are going to run.
鈥淚鈥檝e worked in demand forecasting before, but not on such a large scale where you are actually taking care of more than 5,000 SKUs at a single point,鈥 she says. 鈥淪easonality can happen, demand can change, there are a lot of different constraints that actually come together. It鈥檚 amazing to see how you handle that process and make sure all the individual, small components are working in tandem.鈥
Outside of Maheshwari鈥檚 work, she says the atmosphere at Great Lakes Cheese is one she鈥檚 greatly enjoyed.
鈥淚t is very employee centric,鈥 she says. 鈥淭hey make you feel like a very valued member, and they take the time and energy to invest in you and help you learn about the business.鈥
Nishitha Laveti (pictured below), a second-year, STEM MBA student, shares similar sentiments.
鈥淕reat Lakes Cheese has an amazing work culture where people are so supportive and helpful,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 have never come across a company where they follow their work culture so diligently.鈥
Laveti started her fellowship in January as a supply chain planning intern with a focus on the transportation department.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a great opportunity for me as a student to explore areas where I could be guided by the best expertises in the field,鈥 she says. 鈥淭his opportunity is helping me to get a complete exposure on a logistics and supply chain department.鈥