Thu Ra '12

Quaker Oats, Cedar Rapids, IA

During the summer of 2010, Thu Ra '12 worked at Quaker Oats Company in Cedar Rapids as a supply chain intern. He one of a six-member team exploring the issue of over-packing on the production line. The result of the over-packing has cost Quaker Oats a considerable amount of money, so the goal of the project was to reduce the amount of loss due to over-packing. During the time Thu was with Quaker, the team was in an analysis phase and moved into a solution design phase.

Thu attributes his success to the rigorous study at Cornell, "Cornell played a large role in preparing me for my internship, giving me the skills necessary to do well. The academic knowledge that I received from Cornell was excellent and aided me in understanding various discussions and interactions, such as when people are talking during meetings about economy of scale, arbitrage, and other economical concepts. Also, when my supervisor arranged a training session for the Minitab Software application and I told him that I had used it in my statistics class, he was pleasantly surprised."

"The internship at Quaker gave me a great inspiration about the management industry. I found out that food industry management is a very interesting and remarkable. I am now very sure that I want to jump into the management industry in the future as it is where I enjoy working."

Click here to read Thu's blog.