Midmark Corporation-Erin Gaerke

Midmark Corporation in Versailles, Ohio

For my STEP Signature project, I was an intern in the Global Sourcing department at Midmark in Versailles, Ohio. Midmark makes medical, dental, and animal health products and is on the cutting edge of creating an efficient healthcare experience. They have begun to working healthcare providers to design work spaces and best practices to make the doctor’s office as efficient and effective as possible (which as an operations management major, I find fascinating). At Midmark, the Global Sourcing team in Versailles is the purchasing department for all of our sites across the united states. As an intern, my main projects and duties included a competitive quote project, attending supplier visits and business reviews, creating reports to provide transparency to the purchasing department on current supplier/commodity spends, reconciling invoices, and working with a supplier who was experiencing quality issues.

Prior to my internship at Midmark, I had no experience in purchasing and had never interacted with suppliers. My previous internship at BASF was focused mainly on internal improvement goals and was contained to the logistics department; interacting with persons outside of my organization on a daily basis was a new challenge and one I enjoyed immensely! During my internship at Midmark there were many ways in which I grew in understanding of myself and the world of business. One transformation I experienced was growing in confidence of my ability to succeed in the workplace. During my internship at Midmark, I was given many tasks and projects that full-time employees handle on a daily basis. With every successful project, I became more assured in my ability to do quality work in the “real world”. While at Midmark, I also grew in knowledge of my major and how businesses operate. I really loved the many “aha” moments where I recognized something I had learned in school being applied in the business world. It was absolutely fascinating to see the broad concepts covered in my textbooks come to life in front of me with real applications. Lastly, I gained greater insight into the complicated and interdependent relationship of suppliers in the supply chain. My time at Midmark grew me both personally and professionally and I’m extremely blessed for my internship there this past summer.

My time in the Global Sourcing team at Midmark grew my confidence to succeed in the workplace because of the many projects I was given and their scope. My biggest project, a competitive quote project with $1M in spend, challenged me to grow both personally and professionally. While a significant part of this project was organizing multiple quotes and comparing dollars and cents, the most difficult part of the project was communicating the results to a supplier who had lost $200K of business annually. The supplier lost this business because I decided to shift several of their parts to a more cost-competitive supplier. This was a difficult hurdle for me to jump, as during the quote process I had become familiar with the business and didn’t feel qualified to tell a seasoned business professional that Midmark would be doing business elsewhere because of a decision I (an intern) had made. After talking through these concerns with my mentor, I gave the hard news to the supplier in a face-to-face meeting. It was by far the most challenging moment of my professional career, but it went better than expected and I walked away with a newfound confidence in my abilities that continues to this day.

Drill implemented to decrease variation time

Another area of growth was in several opportunities I had to apply my learning from Fisher to the business world. The most concrete example of this was when I had the opportunity to participate in a kaizen (continuous improvement) workshop in one of our manufacturing plants. Our task was to decrease variation time, which is time spent on activities that are not a part of the established process (extra, unnecessary work). I was able to identify an opportunity to eliminate 20 seconds of variation time by implementing a new drill to a station. I also was able to utilize some of the tools from class such as a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) Analysis to determine our positioning in commodity categories. As our warehouse utilized both Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) and kanban inventory management systems, I asked to observe how the respective processes worked; I was fascinated to see how in-depth a process resulted from a topic that had only covered a paragraph or two in my textbooks. I absolutely loved those moments where a concept we had touched upon in class came to life in front of me. From my time at Midmark, I am better equipped to talk on business management strategies and analysis both in the classroom and in the professional world.

One of my more immersive learning opportunities from my internship was being on the front lines of a supplier on-time delivery (OTD) issue. Our #1 supplier was experiencing quality issues from their supplier which impacted their ability to meet our delivery dates. Because of the critical nature of the situation, my mentor and I made several trips to our #1 supplier to discuss strategies to minimize supply chain impact. Simply being present in these meetings opened my eyes to the many factors that contribute to a well-oiled supply chain. During these meetings, the sheer number of considerations that factored into OTD was amazing to me: global tariffs, lead times, manufacturing schedules, political stability of the raw material suppliers’ countries, freight and shipping costs, weather, and so much more factored into us receiving our assembled product from our supplier! I was enthralled at how complicated the global supply chain is and how critical it is to each of our lives as consumers. During these meetings, working with suppliers to problem-solve solutions that would minimize impacts to our customers and continue to maintain the highest quality standards was extremely helpful as it gave me a crash-course of supply chain constraints and considerations. Through all of these meetings, my mentor would debrief me before attending and clarify any of my questions after to ensure that I understood the situation entirely. I found this approach extremely helpful and now feel prepared to problem-solve supply chain situations with others.

My co-workers & I at our steel supplier’s facility

Throughout my internship at Midmark, one of my favorite aspects of the job was the amount of personal interaction I had with my co-workers. Being an intern can be a daunting position but the openness and friendliness of my colleagues made the learning experience much more enjoyable. Each of my co-workers gave me different avenues for growth and helped me to understand operations at Midmark as well as business in general. I know I couldn’t have succeeded in any of my projects without their input and advice. My mentor and manager were both especially strong in these areas and advocated for me to be exposed to my interest areas. For example, as an operations management major, I love getting to observe processes and understand how they work. Because of this, they invited me on an overnight supplier business review in Cleveland to visit one of our steel manufacturers and suppliers. This trip was absolutely amazing because I was able to witness steel manufacturing first hand and gain understanding of how businesses like Midmark benchmark suppliers and their performance along dimensions such as quality, pricing, OTD, and communication. My co-workers were absolutely amazing at explaining parts of the business that I did not understand and worked to develop my professional skill-set.

The transformation and growth I experienced during my internship at Midmark is extremely valuable to me because it will be critical in my fast-approaching career. As I will be interning in the purchasing department at J.M. Smucker’s this upcoming summer, the knowledge I gained at Midmark will help me to succeed and make well-informed decisions. In addition, the confidence I gained to make and communicate hard decisions will be helpful in all aspects of my life, from business to my personal life. Prior to my internship at Midmark, I would dwell on my mistakes longer than it was productive to do so; since this summer, I am more focused on the future and moving past my mistakes. I have found this to be immensely helpful to my health as well as succeeding in school and business. From my time in purchasing at Midmark, I now want to pursue purchasing full-time in my future career and feel prepared to do so with the skills I gained. I am extremely thankful and blessed for my experience at Midmark and all the skills and lessons it taught me.