My Practicum Experience
Practicum Site: Hog Slat, Inc., Humboldt, IA Distribution Center
Title: Logistics Intern
My practicum experience this summer has helped me develop both personally and professionally. I had the chance to get my first experience working in a warehouse setting. I started by working on the shipping and receiving floor for the first 3 weeks of my practicum, then I moved on to the inventory control department where I spent the rest of my summer.
On the receiving side of the warehouse, I was able to learn the process of physically receiving products off of a truck, checking how accurate the quantity of the item is and putting the item in a slot of the warehouse racking.
The process began to come full-circle when I started my second week of the practicum in the shipping department. I happened to pick items that I had physically received, counted, labeled, and put away the week before. I was able to make an impact by picking items for orders as efficiently as possible. Most of the orders that I was a part of were being shipped to other Hog Slat regional stores from around the Midwest, to as south as Texas, and as east as North Carolina.
Next, I settled into the inventory control department where I learned many different processes that have a common goal of increasing warehouse efficiency. I learned various processes such as completing a random cycle count (an alterative to having one large inventory count each year which could shut down a warehouse for over a week) and determining the movement of different items to increase warehouse efficiency.
I developed some goals with my mentor before the start of my practicum experience. The goals were to manipulate different reports in order to keep the warehouse filled with high selling items (remedying the constant need to put orders on backorder) and to strategize a new way to slot items within the warehouse. These goals pushed me to learn the different processes in order to be able to improve them, asking any questions I had and giving my best effort in order to make as much progress as I could within this short amount of time. I feel that my progress this summer has been better than I could have imagined, as I have learned how to be as efficient of an employee as possible for my company.