{"id":23327,"date":"2017-02-17T19:38:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T19:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=23327"},"modified":"2024-11-27T10:25:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:25:08","slug":"engineering-senior-named-intern-of-the-year-by-the-american-society-for-engineering-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/02\/engineering-senior-named-intern-of-the-year-by-the-american-society-for-engineering-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering Senior Named Intern of the Year by the American Society for Engineering Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Josh Garvey<\/p>\n

UConn Engineering senior Lindsey Gilson, who was named the UConn Co-op of the year for 2016, has also been named the Intern of the Year by the American Society for Engineering Education.<\/p>\n

Gilson, a Management and Engineering for Manufacturing major, worked at Unilever for eight months. During her time at Unilever, Gilson led two projects that saved the company over $1 million and made inventory systems used across a number of states more efficient. Catherine Hernlem, a customer supply chain manager with Unilever, praised Gilson\u2019s maturity and leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cLindsey Gilson was by far the most exceptional Co-Op that I have ever worked with at Unilever, truly an asset,\u201d Hernlem said in a letter supporting Gilson\u2019s nomination as the Intern of the Year. UConn refers to Gilson\u2019s eight month stint at Unilever as co-op, while the American Society for Engineering Education defines Gilson\u2019s term as an internship.<\/p>\n

In January of 2016, Gilson traveled to Minneapolis to start her time with Unilever, where she was in charge of managing the inventory of Unilever mayonnaise and tea to a large chain of retail stores.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat entailed managing inventory, pulling reports and a lot of data analysis. I learned a whole lot about Excel. You know how everyone puts \u2018proficient in Excel\u2019 on their resume? Now I can say that I still don\u2019t know half of the things that it can do,\u201d Gilson said.<\/p>\n

In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, one of Gilson\u2019s projects involved improving on-shelf availability; making sure that products are available all the time.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lindsey Gilson (right) poses with UConn Engineering Career Consultant John Bau at the American Society for Engineering Education Award Ceremony. Bau nominated Gilson for the intern award. (Photo courtesy of Craig Gunn, Cooperative and Experiential Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe problem I addressed was when they said they had stock on shelves but it wasn\u2019t really there. People would go to shelves and they would say \u2018I really want this size of mayonnaise but it\u2019s not there.\u2019 They either don\u2019t buy it or buy a competitors mayonnaise,\u201d Gilson said.<\/p>\n

Gilson found that the inventory system had flaws that caused it to report available products when none were present, and to also report that no items were available when there was a supply on hand. In response, Gilson created a system to more effectively monitor the inventory and accurately sense when stock was running low.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowning achievement of knowing it would work was when we would take an item and track it online, from when it arrived [at the store] to four days after when the case would sell out. We would know [from the revised system], that there was an inventory, go to the store and have them redo the count. A lot of sales were getting lost,\u201d Gilson said.<\/p>\n

Her second major project involved refining a program created by an outside contractor that automatically manages orders for the large retailer Gilson worked with, which was used by four percent of the company\u2019s distribution centers. The program was supposed to sense when a new order was required and automatically order new stock, but that aspect wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just tanking in that one aspect, it was all backed up,\u201d Gilson said.<\/p>\n

The team Gilson was a part of had a meeting where they discussed the issue.\u00a0 Afterwards, Gilson decided to fix the problem herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne Friday afternoon, I sat down at 3 p.m. and didn\u2019t stand up for four hours. I built this Excel document which essentially replaced the contractor\u2019s system. No one really asked me to do that. We were on a call one day and everyone was so upset that I just took it upon myself to fix it,\u201d Gilson said.<\/p>\n

Gilson\u2019s program addressed a flaw in the contractor\u2019s ordering algorithm, which was making the process inaccurate. After the switch, Gilson\u2019s system immediately began improving the ordering process, with a nine percent increase in effectiveness. The ordering issues were fixed within two weeks. The system she made was expanded and used in 12 percent of the retail company\u2019s distribution centers and was eventually incorporated into the original program.<\/p>\n

As a result of her exceptional work, Gilson was offered a place in the Unilever Future Leaders Programme. The program offers recent graduates a three-year rotation in three different jobs throughout the supply chain of Unilever, to help them become better leaders within the company. Gilson said that she was glad to be recognized for her hard work, while emphasizing that other students could excel like she did, if given the chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not one to try to get a lot of credit for what I do. I\u2019ll just go about my way and not ask for much recognition. [\u2026] It\u2019s good to know that people can recognize hard work and initiative,\u201d Gilson said. \u201cI think more students are like me, they just don\u2019t have the opportunity to show it.\u00a0 I\u2019m very grateful to Unilever for taking a chance on me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Management and Engineering for Manufacturing senior Lindsey Gilson won the award at a recent American Society of Engineering Education conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":221841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56,68],"class_list":["post-23327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 19:23:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221849,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23327\/revisions\/221849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/221841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23327"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=23327"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}