#eriksparre

[eriksparre]

Summing up

I would just like to put a final post to summarize my internship and follow up on the expectations I had in the beginning. All in all the internship has been a great experience and I have gotten a good picture about India, expat life and of Atlas Copco as a company as well.

My expectations before the internship was that it would be tough, that I would deliver something useful and that I would gain memorable experiences from India. I would say that all of these expectations were fulfilled, though I didn’t stay long enough to see the quotation system actually implemented.

India is a very interesting country different from all the countries I have lived in a visited before. The people are very friendly, helpful and are never far from a smile. The food was very good although sometimes it would have been nice with a little more variety.

Having met people at many different management levels and countries I feel that I have gotten a really good insight into Atlas Copco during my internship as well. Atlas Copco has a really strong company culture and you can feel that people enjoy working here. The company believes in its employees and has an ability to think long term instead of just to the next quarterly report. It is not a coincidence that the company that was struggling to make a profit the first 30 years of business, but not giving up, is now one of the most profitable and innovative companies in Sweden.

I want to thank the people in India and the US who made my internship a memorable one; my supervisor Hrishikesh Labdhe, my buddy and hosts Tom and Darla Reeder, the operations manager Prem Madhavan, project owner Alex Grant and the managing director Filip Vandenberghe. Thank you all and hope to get a chance to meet with you again.

/Erik

[ac-internship-blog]

QuickQuote

A lot of my blog posts have been about my life here in India, but what have I actually achieve for the company? As you might recall, my task was to develop a quotation system for offline use that is user friendly and generates professional quotations. The application, named QuickQuote, is HTML, CSS and JavaScript based. It looks like a normal web page and generates a quotation in PDF format. So how did the road to the product look?

Additions and deletions over time. In total about 55 000 addition to the application. Started out with a lot of additions, then you can see my time off in the middle and deletion of unnecessary code in the end.

This chart show when the commits (code change uploads) were made. Apparently Tuesdays have been full off activity while Saturdays have been time for rest.

A screen shot of a part of the product selection view

Developing this software proved to be a big challenge for me as I had limited experience for doing something similar. As most engineers at Atlas Copco Nashik are mechanical engineers with very limited knowledge about programming, I had to work a lot on my own and make crucial design decision based on my own research. I have certainly gained a lot of knowledge from this project and I have high hopes that it will create value for the company. The main improvements from todays solution includes that it:

 Saves time; now you only have to use one interface to create a 10 page quotation with cover letter, pricing summary, T&C and product description attachment.

Gives a professional look; the users don’t have to make any design adjustment themselves, it is generated automatically  

 Minimizes mistakes; the system only allows the users to choose product parts that are compatible with each other.  

Now it is time to enjoy the favorable company discount at the SPA here at the Hyatt, Mumbai, where I am waiting for my flight to Delhi, London and eventually Stockholm.

[ac-internship-blog]

Last weekend

As Max wrote in his post, he and Alexandre came to visit Nashik and we had a good time. After the factory tour on Friday we visited the old town in Nashik, Panchawati (meaning five banyan trees). The monsoon this year is much more wet than last year and the water level was really high so the vegetable market was flooded and had to close down.

"Vegetable market" in Panchawati

In the afternoon we went for some Indian wine tasting at Sula Vineyard with Prem, Tom and Darla. The white wines were a little acidy and the winner was the red wine, “Dindori”.  After enjoying some wine and cheese we got some nice crab and fish platter at Yahoo.

Wine and Cheese at Sula

Saturday we went to Ellora cave and Sunday we spent our afternoon at the Taj hotel in Nashik, playing water polo and relaxing in the Jacuzzi recovering from the weekends activities. All in all it was a great weekend with a lot of fun. Thank you Max and Alex for coming here and thanks to Prem, Hrishikesh, Tom and Darla for taking good care of us. Oh, and Mr. Driver too!

A monkey spotting a banana inside our car

This morning I had breakfast together with Darla on my way to work. It was really tasty and cheap as well; we paid 100 rupees (11 SEK) for both of us.

Cheese Dosa, Indian style pancake

Butter Paw Bhaji

Having our breakfast by the road we saw a guy cutting off a branch from a tree. The problem was that the branch was hanging over a telephone line, taking it with it when falling down. The best part was that the guy taking it down actually looked surprise by it, as if the branch wouldn’t fall straight down. No wonder there are black outs all the time here…

Oops...

[ac-internship-blog]

Monsoon

If you tell an Indian that you are here for the summer they will be confused. Now is not summer, now is monsoon. The Indian monsoon starts in June and finishes in September, bringing the majority of the yearly rainfall to the country as from November to May there could be six month without any rain. To understand what is does to the country, have a look at the pictures below taken three month apart in May and August. Since I arrived in India I have seen the sun once, and it could rain heavily for days in a row.

Taken in May

Taken in August

The rain also has consequences for the roads in this country. A lot of them have been built of mud, which means that they will rain away during the monsoon. This leads to a lot of potholes and sometimes increases the transportation time immensely, as you can see from the news article below.  

1 hour to drive 1.5 km

Yesterday on our way to the office we saw a monkey by the side of the road. Apparently it is pretty uncommon to see monkeys in the city of Nashik, leopards on the other hand seems to be more common, although I haven’t seen any yet. On the way to work I have seen cows, buffalos, donkeys, camels, dogs, goats, mongooses and now a monkey too. One of the biggest differences living here compared to China (beside China being more developed) is that you can actually see a lot of living animals here.

Now I am sitting with Max and Alexandre in my office, we have just finished a tour of the Nashik factory. This weekend we will go and visit some UNESCO listed caves, so that's what the next post will be about. 

[ac-internship-blog]

My Summer 2013

So, I am Erik Sparre, born and raised in the Stockholm area and currently an Industrial Engineering and Management student at the University of Linköping. Beside the engineering curriculum, I have been studying Chinese and last year I did an exchange year in Shanghai.

This summer, however, I will do a project based in Atlas Copco’s manufacturing plant in Nashik, India. The main project will be to develop a new quotation system that is able to produce professional quotations easily. In addition to this the solution has to be able to work offline, since many of the sales will be in locations with limited Internet connection. The system should also prevent mistakes from being made by only allowing compatible parts to be chosen together.

My expectations are that it will be a rather tough project that requires a fair amount of work. My previous experience from software development is very limited, so I definitely believe that I gain a lot of new knowledge this summer. My ambition is to deliver a solution that the sales team have good use for and that it can help them to get more productive. I also hope to get to know this amazing culture, meet interesting people and get memorable experiences.

And the food! That’s certainly something I am looking forward to. Although it has come to my understanding that the “spicy level” is completely different from the one in Sweden. Let the adventure begin!

Allt the best,

Erik Sparre