MALVERN, Pa. — Parth Trivedi was excited when a classmate first told him about an opening for a continuous improvement manager. Trivedi had just earned his master of engineering management and Six Sigma Black Belt at Penn State Great Valley, and he and his friends joined a job search team, organized by the campus’ Career Management Services, to support each other and share opportunities as they applied for jobs.
Trivedi said he knew he wanted to work in process improvement, but realistically, he thought, “I'm just a recent graduate with the fresh experience of three and a half years, which is also not in this country.” He had worked as a product engineer in India, before coming to the U.S. to earn his graduate degree, so he thought he would only qualify for entry-level roles at this stage of his career.
But when another friend later told him about the same managerial position, Trivedi said he thought, “I have to give it a shot. … My previous job made it clear for me that I am more fit for a managerial role in a technical firm.”
So, he reached out to the recruiter at Universal Pure, a food processing company, and he was invited to interview. He researched the position, ensured he was well prepared and explained to the hiring committee how his continuous improvement skills could help the company overcome challenges.
As the interview drew to a close, the committee invited Trivedi to walk around the plant and see workers packaging foods and beverages.
“This is one of the things which I feel I’m good at, where I observe a lot of things,” Trivedi said. “I saw how they run things, how product is being placed, how it is packed, how many people are needed for that, what is the current process.”
After the tour, the hiring manager asked Trivedi, “What did you see that could be improved?” Although Trivedi hadn’t known they would ask this, he said his education and training allowed him to give a detailed answer on the spot. He suggested ergonomic changes to eliminate lifting heavy boxes, giving workers clips to pick up multiple bottles at a time, and improving line balancing around conveyor belts so that workers would have enough room to move freely while still being able to reach things easily.
Trivedi got the job, and he said he loves using his engineering and management skills to optimize operations. Less than a year into this position, he said he and his colleagues have saved the company thousands of dollars by optimizing labor and automating tasks.
Trivedi pointed to his highly practical engineering management classes along with his Six Sigma certificate as major factors that helped him achieve such high cost savings for his company.
“The curriculum was so well designed and well articulated,” he said, mentioning coursework in operations, supply chain, improving efficiency, technical project management and negotiations. “I could relate instantly, I could understand instantly, and I could apply instantly.”
Through his graduate classes, Trivedi learned to use various software tools, such as Tableau for data analytics and visualization, iGrafx software for process optimization and advanced functions in Excel for statistical analysis. As a research assistant with Associate Professor of Engineering Kailash Satyamurthy, Trivedi explored the uses of iGrafx software for process optimization and value stream mapping and helped in creating a step-by-step guide.
Trivedi said he also enjoyed participating in a team simulation game in one of his classes, where groups competed to manufacture the most product while making decisions to work around constraints, such as machine capacity, a fixed budget, limited time and supplies.
“It was such an interactive game, and it made us understand so many critical aspects of the subject,” Trivedi said.
To continue building his skills while he was completing his master’s degree, Trivedi searched for a summer internship. He asked Penn State Great Valley’s Career Management Services for feedback on his resume and LinkedIn profile, and he learned how to network with Penn State alumni and his classmates.
“Since it's a graduate professional campus, we get to interact with a lot of people who are currently in the workforce,” Trivedi said. “So, that made a whole lot of difference in understanding the work culture over here, what people are looking for, what industries to work into. It provided an opportunity to network.”
Trivedi also expanded his network through a bus trip that Great Valley’s Career Management Services organized, offering students transportation to a career fair at Penn State University’s main campus, about three hours away. There, Trivedi met a recruiter from Johnson Matthey, a technology and manufacturing company, and he landed a summer internship in operations with a focus on continuous improvement. He mapped out standard operating procedures for two manufacturing processes and helped train workers in safe, efficient operations.
The internship confirmed Trivedi’s interest in working in process improvement. He said he found it rewarding to build trust with workers, notice challenges they faced and offer to help them, while taking care not to tell them what to do, which could provoke resistance.
“You treat others how you want to be treated,” Trivedi said. He applied that lesson from his internship when he began his continuous improvement manager job at Universal Pure. “My whole first two months, I was working on the floor with the people on the line. I was packing, I was palletizing, I was bringing in the products, and I was staging them, I was labeling.”
He said that the most learning came observing and participating in the work himself.
“I’ll understand whatever troubles are there, whatever fatigues they face,” Trivedi said. “Now there is a good rapport, now they understand everybody is aligned. We have to work toward automation so that other things can be efficient. Change is definitely a challenge. But once you are there, and they say, ‘OK, there is someone who is looking out for us and helping us,’ then that’s where the change starts.”
Trivedi and his colleagues prepared curriculum for Universal Pure employees to become Six Sigma white belts and yellow belts, giving them basic and intermediate knowledge of process improvement concepts.
“The whole essence of it is not telling them what to do but also explaining the ‘why’ behind it,” he said.
Trivedi said he enjoys working with a large team to implement changes at his local plant as well as five others he oversees across the East Coast.
“For me, this is a gold mine. There are a lot of improvements that can be done in this plant alone,” he said. “It’s the unique novelty … that’s what motivates me. Every day it’s a new thing for me.”