GRADUATES BLOG

From PM Graduate to full-time Manager

Hi! My name is Cleo Kortenhorst and I am a former Production Management graduate, originally from the Netherlands. In this blog post I will tell you some more about my experiences in offboarding into my new role as Transport Manager Outbound.

When applying for the production management graduate programme my ultimate goal was to become a manager after the programme. That is also exactly the goal of the programme, but easier said than done. It needs a lot of observations, learnings, reflections, moments of insecurity and respect for the fellow colleagues around.

When I started my traineeship in September 2020, I didn’t realize that this road for 2 years would be the steepest learning curve I have ever had in my life so far. Is this a bad thing? No, absolutely not! It is very intense, but I loved every single minute of it. In the first 2 rotations you will become a project leader and in the third rotation a team leader in order to learn how to lead. This for me turned out to be the perfect combination/base towards my new role after offboarding.

Currently, I am a Transport Manager Outbound West in Germany, which means all the finished goods produced at Arla Foods Pronsfeld Dairy will be transported by doing of my team (+- 60 FTEs). By both our own drivers as well as us using 3PL companies for national and international transport. This is of course a huge responsibility, which needs a certain level of experience.

And that is exactly where I would like to take you guys back to the structure of the PM programme, as without that backbone I would never have been able to work in this role. I will explain this statement with a few examples:

1. ONE OF MY CURRENT TASKS/CHALLENGES IS LEADING THE TEAM, FROM DRIVERS TO PLANNERS. BRINGING UP TOPICS LIKE: MONITORING THE WORK SAFETY, CHALLENGES BECAUSE OF CHANGING SITUATIONS AROUND US, HIRING EMPLOYEES ETC.

This example is what the whole programme is about and is experienced especially during the third rotation. During this rotation I was the Team leader of the filling department in the newly built Powder Tower 2 in Pronsfeld, which is the biggest Tower of Europe. As the tower was completely new, the department needed to be completely built up from scratch: Commissioning of the department and educating the team. The commissioning gave a lot of complications in the beginning for us as team, and challenges we needed to fix. What I learned in that period was: As leader you should learn what your employees are doing, and respect them to the fullest. Because only together you can use all the available knowledge. So by listening to the team, to fellow colleagues and external companies, it was important to learn the processes as fast as possible. So that an efficient and safe working culture was created.

These learnings I took with me to the new job, whereby I am trying to understand the processes and steps the team is going through every day. Only then it is possible to support them on where support is needed. And is it also only possible to see for example issues on safety or quality.

2. BESIDES LEADING A TEAM, IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO LOOK FOR PROCESSES TO BE OPTIMIZED. THIS IS GOOD TO SEE WHEN COMING IN WITH “FRESH” EYES.

During the first two rotations, leading of a bigger project is the goal. During these two rotations I learned how to work with internal and external stakeholders, as well as putting the results in clear overviews to be presented to the management team and with that move the project/dairy forward. This was a very thorough background for my current role. From the moment I started in my new role, it was made clear that we needed a so-called exchange trailer yard with one of our biggest carriers, so that our on-time delivery would increase. This meant again working with a lot of stakeholders: The Warehouse team, the external carrier, the own team and the logistics optimization team. With a bit of time pressure and a strong team performance, we are now having a quite successful pilot period.

3. PERFORMANCE AND DISCUSSIONS ARE BEST TO BE LED BY SOLID DATA.

During the first rotation I taught myself how to build PowerBI Dashboards and how to use that to analyze the required data. This was a perfect training in working with big data, making it smaller and well to understand. Because when you are able to quickly draw out an analysis, then you can get exactly the information that you need. This skill is currently helping me on daily basis to understand where we are standing and what we need to improve or where we are facing risks in the future.

4. HAVING A LAUGH WITH THE COLLEAGUES

In both roles this is one of the most important learnings I had so far: Don’t always be too serious, have a laugh with colleagues. What I saw is that colleagues opened up very quickly by having a laugh together. It brings everyone closer but also information is shared easier, as the colleagues are feeling more free to speak to their manager.

These are 4 important lessons I learned in the last two years, that I am taking with me on daily base into my current role. Does this mean that the learning curve is less steep than in during the programme? No, absolutely not. There are still many occasions which are new, or are putting you in a challenging situations. But as a graduate you learned how to deal with this very fast, as we were challenged with unknown situations for 2 years in a row.

The biggest key outtake I am currently using the most, and also for everyone who will be in the same situations, is: Be humble and always ask questions until the whole process is clear.

Cleo Kortenhorst

PM Graduate

Period: September 2020 – August 2022

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