Industrial Practice in IPE

These days only theoretical knowledge is not just enough to compete in the job market. Since the competition is growing in the manufacturing world, employers do not have much time to train up employees; they want graduates who can contribute from the very beginning. In this situation who can enter in job with some industrial experience is the big winner.
Thinking about this demand, the department of Industrial and Production Engineering (IPE) of BUET designed its course curricula. It includes a six week extensive in plant industrial practice which is a 3 credit hours course. Industrial practice usually starts after the completion of the third year. The general goal of the industrial practice course is to provide the students with an on-the-job exposure and an opportunity of experimental learning. Specifically the objectives of the program are; (1) To have a comprehensive idea of a typical manufacturing system (2) To experience and realize how the scientific and technical knowledge is applied to real life situation (3) To provide an opportunity to observe what is required in terms of capability and human relations to work in an industrial environment (4) To learn how typical engineering and management problems are solved in running an industry.
In this practice period every student has to work in an eight hours shift in an industry like an employee of the industry. Students are grouped consisting of 2-4 members. The students reporting for the program is placed under the supervision of a responsible person, preferably a technical manager, in the interning organization, henceforth called the industrial supervisor. The students are also having a supervisor for each group from the department of IPE called the academic supervisor. Both supervisors jointly plan the training program and the industrial supervisor will run the program on day to day basis. The students keep a log of their daily activities and show it to the industrial supervisor at the end of the day. They have to prepare weekly reports of their activities during week in their report book, supplied by BUET and a comprehensive report after the initial phase (3 weeks).Apart from guiding the students, the industrial supervisor keep the attendance of the students and receive the weekly reports.
The industrial supervisor in consultation with the academic supervisor will assign a problem to each student or a group to study and analyze. Each student/group will prepare a report on his/her assigned problem after the completion of their study. The industrial supervisor assesses the performance during the attachment and communicates confidentially the same to the academic supervisor along with all the reports submitted by the students. After the completion of the internship the students have to present their experience in the presence of the industrial and academic supervisors and other interested persons from the company and the department. Both supervisors are responsible for the grading.
This time the seventh batch of IPE is on industrial practice now which will end on 14 June. The previous batches performed very well and many of them have been recruited in the attachment organization after completion of their graduation. Many of the students got part time job offer after the completion of the intern from the interning organization. The twenty nine students of this batch covering eight companies dividing into eight groups. The companies are British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB), Burlington’s Ltd, Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory, Babylon Garments Ltd, Fakir Knitwear Ltd, Rahimafrooz Batteries Ltd, Standard Group and Thai Poly Shawn (BD) Ltd. Besides these the previous batches already went to the companies like Unilever Bangladesh Ltd, BOC Bangladesh, Singer, Renate Ltd, Beximco Synthetics Ltd, Padma Textiles, Milk Vita, Partex, OTOBI, Tropical Knitex Ltd etc for their industrial practice and completed with great success.
Md. Abu Hasan