Trade. Fixing the process. Solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform?* - AAS Essay

Priority development areas: Trade

I work at my company which operates the biggest warehouse in Southeast Asia of a market-leading FMCG company. Here, we were facing a problem of a long inbound process which caused a loss of time and low productivity. The inbound process is the logistics process of receiving goods from factories to the warehouse by unloading trucks, checking goods, and storing them in the warehouse. Thus, we worked on an improvement project which could eliminate the steps by improving the warehouse management system. The team consisted of the Warehouse Operation Manager, System Manager, System & Business Analyst, and me as one of the management trainees of the company.

After doing some trials on-site, the proposed system failed in recording goods received in the system. Since I had experience in operating the existing system directly and observing the actual current operational process, the project team entrusted me to analyze the root cause of the project's failure. After assessing it, I found out the problem was caused by the operators from the factories violating the existing SOP of the input data process which impacted the new proposed system process. I escalated the issues to the project team and managers related to fixing the process by giving supporting data to gain their trust. Furthermore, since the project will significantly change the SOP of around 90 people from 5 roles, I innovated the training method by providing a video to make easier the learning process.

As an outcome, this project succeeds in eliminating 4 out of 10 steps of the process and has benefited the company up to 57% from cost reduction and sped up the process by around 42%. Because the outcome significantly improves the business, the management also wanted to adopt a similar idea in different sites and operations. It was only a small act but hopefully will contribute to enhancing the logistics infrastructure to better Indonesia's trade.

Keep your narration to the maximum of 200 words. The AAS is a word limited response essay application type. The shorter and more concise your response, the better it will be for the screener who has to read your essay. Based on the fact that he has to review hundreds of applications per day, they appreciate short and easily scannable responses as opposed to this type of essay, over written and taking too long to get to the point. Keep it short. Do not use creative writing standards for it. Just stick to the immediate facts that will help him easily understand the situation, your role in solving it, and what the solution that you developed was. It does not need to be covered by too much background information.