Last challenge

Hi all,

As I told you last time, my new endeavor in my summer internship is to outline the strategy for commercial cooperation between us and our partner company in Mexico. From all the projects that I have been involved within through the summer, this might be the most demanding one. We need to come out with a good proposal for our friends in Mexico and to be honest, this is will be a very hard task considering how well they are doing already in the market. Still, we have some things to offer and we have started conversations with several parties in the country to be able to overcome difficulties.

For now, the trip to Mexico has been postponed until the end of July, when a meeting will take place with our future clients. This is going to be our first opportunity to introduce our company and the things that we can bring to the table. As a team, we are putting a lot of effort in coming up with great ideas for that meeting because that first impression is going to be crucial for the future success of the project.

Also, we are working on preparing a kick-off event for the Mexican market, where we are launching the brand to all parties in the country. We are managing two options to do this, one in mid-August and the other one by the end of the same month. As in past events, we want to get important players from all parties in the business environment where we will work at to join us in one single event, so that everybody can know the faces behind our brand and they have a personalized feeling about the company instead of just a name. Once again, putting everything together will be a big challenge but I’m confident that with the team that I’m working, success will be assured.

Half way through the summer

It is half way through the summer and this is my last post, but it is not the end of my internship. I will stay in Lear until the end of July. Through the past two months, I have learned a lot. The internship has not only offered me an opportunity to apply what I learned in class, but also introduced me to the working environment in an American firm. 

What I have learned first is that big companies have their own database systems. Lear has several systems that are responsible for different activities. What we have learned in Business Information Technology class can help us a lot in real work. I am glad that I took the BIT 311 Excel class. A lot of daily jobs are conducted in Excel.

Also the experience has confirmed that the best way to learn is to ask a lot of questions. When I first started the project of account reconciliations, I had a lot of questions at first. However, I hesitated to keep asking the assistant controller, because I was afraid that I would interrupt her normal work. Later she clearly told me that she understood that I had just started and was more than welcome to help me with my questions. To work more efficiently, I usually went through the work first and made sure that I myself could not solve the problems.

Meanwhile there are some improvements I can do. I am still working on the fixed asset project, which is the biggest project assigned to me from day one. To finish this, I need to cooperate with the maintenance manager to tag the untagged items and modify the entries in the Fixed Asset System. However, he is always very busy and we have not finished tagging the assets yet. There is not much time left, so I definitely need to find a better way to cooperate with him. Or I should try to reach out to other people and see whether they can help.

In all, this internship has benefited me a lot. I got to know many great friends and learned from them. No matter in which company I will be working, the experience I gained today can definitely help my future adjustments to the new working environment.

The Worls Soccer Masters Tour

Hello everyone,

I just landed back in Michigan after a demanding weekend in Miami. As I wrote before, we had an event last weekend with several goals at the same time. We were inviting two groups of clients, who had to be managed separately, and also had to manage two mini-events outside of the stadium to reach the public. As I’m sure everybody knows, managing four things at the same time can become an impossible task and this was not the exception. Several problems appeared along the way and a lot of “on the spot” decisions were taken. It’s not really important to get into the details; the important thing is that the final outcome satisfied all the people involved. The worldwide CEO of the Aftermarket Division was present at the event, as well as the Director of the Aftermarket Division for Argentina and the Vice-President of the Aftermarket Division for the US. They all approached me on Sunday to express their satisfaction with the final outcome of the event. If I have to make any recommendation to everybody who is reading, that would be to make your team like you as a person and not just as a co-worker, you will be amazed of the results you will get from them when you achieve this. By the way, the soccer game was also amazing and I’m attaching two pictures, one of the press conference and another one of the match. Let’s see who recognizes the players at the press conference.

Now is Monday and the event is over so we need to look forward towards the next challenges. The strategy for commercial cooperation in Mexico has to be outlined and that’s why I will be flying shortly to Ciudad de Mexico to start the initial meetings with our colleagues over there. I’ll let you guys know how that journey ends; I hope that with a good ending as well.

Driving ahead

Lear corporation is one of the leading companies in the automotive industry. Its business is mainly focused on the seating and the electrical power management system (EPMS). The Taylor division I intern in is an EPMS division.

As a finance intern, part of my job is to make journal entries and also deal with some other financial related work. As I work, I have heard a lot of familiar famous car companies that cooperate with Lear, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Delphi, etc. Last month a German engineer from Volkswagen visited our plant, because VW is considering to further cooperate with us. I had an opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking with him in German. He seemed to be very happy about what he saw. I am sure that we can cooperate with VW more and receive more orders from them.

Michigan is the center for automotive industry. When I work in the company and attend the events, I feel that the companies in the industry are tightly connected. Last week I attended an event held by CoNext, Inforum. The organization evolved from the Women Economic Club and focuses a lot on building professional women's network. The event aims at offering an opportunity for the interns working in the automotive industry to get to know each other and start building our network within the industry early. I met some students from U of M who I did not realize are interning in the same industry as me. After mingling in the event, we felt more connected. Additionally, I met a lot of interns coming from other schools. It was very exciting to meet different people and learn what they are doing in their internships. Also, I got to know the industry better after the event.

The automotive industry is the main leading industry and  there are a lot of great companies in here. I am proud to be interning in one of these companies and gain the essential knowledge and skills for my future.

Formula 1

Hi again,

So, Argentina is over. As I told you before, soccer is a big deal and I’m attaching a little video I took in the stadium while watching the last game the national team played in Buenos Aires. But well, I’m back in the US but this doesn’t mean excitement is over. Before leaving for Argentina a month ago, I started preparing a kick-off trip to the Formula 1 race in Montreal for the cooperation between Magneti Marelli and Mopar in Canada. Time is flying by and as soon as I got back from South America I had to go to Canada.

Gladly, after a busy week working with planning and logistics, everything worked perfectly during the weekend and the attendants went back home extremely confident on the future of the joint venture between both companies. But the trip was not all work. The main event of the weekend was the Formula 1 race, which happened to be extremely exciting. Formula 1 fans reading won’t let me lie when I say that the way in which the race developed made it one of the most exciting ones in the season so far. Attached, you will be able to find a video of the first competitors on the last lap of the race, with Lewis Hamilton leading.

Continuing with the kick-offs, now I’m on the planning of a trip to Miami in a couple of weekends with people from Mopar Mexico. Hopefully, the success of this event would be as good as the ones before and the relation between professionals of both companies start with the right foot. On my next post, I will talk more about how the event went and my future plans for the internship.

More than just work

It has been more than a month since I started my internship in Lear Corporation. I have learned a lot during work and enjoyed working with my coworkers. They are all quite humorous. The social life here is quite enjoyable. 

Every week we try to schedule a lunch to gather all the employees in the office together. Although probably not everyone attends the lunch, we can still have about ten people every time. The lunch gives us a chance to communicate with each other and learn about what is going on in the other departments. 

Cute cat from the animal shelter

What I like most here is that we have a “Casual Friday” rule. Every Friday we can wear jeans and T-shirts, which requires us to donate at least one dollar every time to an organization that changes every month. Last month we donated about 200 dollars to the Animal Shelter in Taylor. Some coworkers and I visited the animal shelter when the HR person sent the money there.  The cats and dogs there were all adorable. Also they need more volunteers to be there, so we decided that we would help there sometime this month to walk the dogs. 

Besides, Kim from the HR department has worked on getting discounts for us to go to the gym nearby. She has got us a great deal. It’s only a $10 dollar sign-up fee and $5 monthly fee for us to go to the gym nearby. It is kind of hard for me to maintain going to the gym, but I am trying to go there at least once every week during lunch time with my colleagues. I definitely need more exercise.

In all, I am enjoying myself right now. The social life in Lear gives me a lot of fun and I am glad to work with my colleagues.