Griffith Foods IT Internship
26th July 2021 – 9th August 2021
Kasper Lundgaard
First and foremost I would like to thank everyone at Griffith Foods for giving me this unique opportunity to experience the corporate world for the first time. I have learned a lot in the short time I have been at the company and have gained insights that will help me progress with my career in the future.
I would like to give a special mention to Chandra, the APAC IT Director at Griffith Foods, for giving up his time to help me learn in a challenging, but also very enjoyable environment. He has taught me so many valuable things that I will bring forward in my career and future jobs. What I have appreciated the most has been the way he has gone about the whole internship. Instead of feeding me information on a spoon and handing out assignments, he has constantly encouraged me to think about the relevance of my work so that I can better understand its purpose. Through an approach like this, I was able to learn a lot more by myself as I was the one doing the thinking and acting upon it. This way the information I take away from this experience will be better embedded within me and will allow me to put this information into practice in future jobs.
The first day was set aside to better understand the company, how it is run, and its values. This gave me a clear vision of who Griffith Foods is as a company and what the work I was going to be doing was for. This demonstrated to me the importance of working for a company that inhabits core values similar to your own. This way you will enjoy your work more and are more likely to strive due to the well-suited environment. Chandra and I then also went through some of Griffith Foods Sales in different product sectors and had a discussion about it which tied in nicely with was I was going to be doing next.
I was then given my first smaller assignment which was to research the top 5 products and customers in each Griffith Food product category and thus recommend a customer in each category. Through my research on this project, I learned a lot about the corporate world, specifically the food ingredient industry. An important characteristic to consider within this assignment was the product sector in which the company operated in. As Griffith foods mainly supply to quick-service restaurants it was key to identify protein producers as well as snack producers when coming up with a potential future client. I wasn’t given too much guidance which allowed me to work at my own pace and formulate arguments from deductions and reasoning of my own. This meant that once again this information would stick with me for a longer period of time than if I had just been told it. At the end of the assignment, I had to pitch my ideas to Chandra and explain why I had chosen each customer which led to a good discussion that raised the questions, how can you stand out from other product producers and what do your product and company bring to the table?
After lots of thinking and discussions with Chandra, I learned about the importance of having a good volume of supply as products are usually demanded in bulk, especially in the QSR sector, which is Griffith’s top sector. I also learned about the importance of stable pricing and how this can be done through ‘Product Fillers’. For example, in Mcdonald’s, there will always be the same regular items on the menu that will have the same price all year round, but seasonal products will change and can therefore vary in price depending on the financial situation of Mcdonald’s at the time. We also talked about the importance of having the ability to produce identical products efficiently in a substitute production facility if there was to be a problem in the supply chain or in one of the factories.
After this Chandra showed me the Griffith Foods business strategy and explained how IT plays a role in achieving its goals. He also taught me the importance of having a purpose for including technology or else it can be seen as pointless. I could see how this helped add structure to the company and allowed for a clearer business vision and next steps for the company. I have also learned that technology in and around the workplace must constantly be upgraded and maintained at an adequate level as technology will only keep rapidly changing with time.
For the remainder and the majority of the internship, I was given an assignment where I had to automate data analytics for Griffith Foods Japan. Within this project, I learned lots of new skills in excel that are transferable to a potential career path of data analytics in the future. Going into this I had little to no experience and knowledge of how to automate data however, I was able to research and work things out by myself while researching. I am now a lot more comfortable and confident with data analytics as a result. There were a few times where I had issues with formulas and needed to seek advice from Chandra. We would then call and discuss potential solutions to the problem which helped me continue and overcome my challenges. The thing I enjoyed the most within this 2-week internship was definitely the freedom I had to create my own formulas for solving problems. I enjoy logistical problems in general and so fixing issues through my own thinking felt really rewarding and enjoyable
Towards the end of the second week, Chandra invited me to join an APAC IT call which was a great experience for me. I was given lots of insights into what it is like to be an IT director and what goes on at the core of a company in terms of IT and business. I spent 15-20 minutes talking through my learning so far and sharing my work with the other Griffith IT members in the APAC region.
To conclude, I would like to thank everyone once again for making this internship possible on such short notice and for giving me this amazing learning opportunity that I will cherish for many years to come. I have learned so many valuable things that I am sure I will bring forward into my future career and have enjoyed every minute working for and being a part of the Griffith Foods team.