The Smurfit Kappa Group is a worldwide organization leader in paper based packing mainly on Europe and Latin America. The Group has sales of approximately 7 billion euro, operations at some 400 locations and over 40,000 employees. Smurfit Kappa Group has operations in container-board, solid board, graphic board, corrugated and solid board packaging. The Group is present in over 20 European countries, nine Latin American nations, as well as Canada, Singapore, the USA and South Africa.
The branch of Smurfit Kappa in Colombia is called "Carton de Colombia". This company is absolute leader in their industry in Colombia and one of the most successful branches of the whole Smurfit Kappa group.
The project I'm going to be performing during this period has several stages. It has some changes from the initial project but it is way more interesting. The first part of the project is about learning all of the procedures used to test the quality of the corrugate packing produced not only in the factory located in Cali but also in other major cities such as Barranquilla, Bogota and Medellin. Packages from all over the country are sent to this laboratory to judge their quality and discover if each plant is performing to what they are expected to.
The second and most important part of the project is to be able to create the initial stage of international accreditation of the laboratory by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The first stage is to analyze all the requisites in order to gain the accreditation and show my supervisor and manager of the Laboratory the benefits and need to invest on this project. This is an extremely expensive accreditation and needs a lot of study.
I was able to get this marvelous opportunity by the help of Camilo Garces (Senior at Loras) who has worked there during the summers and Santiago Mejia (Loras - Class of 2011) who currently works there.
Marcelo,
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a great opportunity. It is good that you have the support from people that have worked there before and can give you guidelines of the company's environment, people and how they work.
In terms of your project, it is very interesting what you are doing, that would not only have implications for the company, but it will defiantly have an impact in the economy of Cali, Barranquilla, Bogota and the cities that it operates. It might even have an impact in a national level. Perhaps it might be a good idea to explore other company's accreditation process so you can get a rough idea on how you should go about your research, it might make it a little easier!
Good Luck with your project :)
Aleja
Thanks a lot! I hope you have a great experience working for such a good company.
ReplyDeleteGood luck for you too! ;)