Report Overview

The report is made as an internship overview and summery for North South University. An
internship helps a student learn and acquire many important skills needed in future professional
career. It also brings out the potential abilities hidden inside the intern. He/she uses the internship
as a valuable experience and setback for the future opportunities and threats as well as finding
inner strength and weaknesses. In a whole an internship brings out the total SWOT analysis of the
person.

In this report on my internship at Apex Footwear Limited I have included and summery of the
organization and its structure. I have also included its operational process and the process and tasks
done by the department I was working under. I have also described the specific tasks I was assigned
along with the things I have learned. This report has helped me critically analyze my own time
spent with the organization.

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 Overview of the Organization
Apex Footwear Limited (AFL) is Bangladesh one the biggest leather footwear exporters of
Bangladesh. Its main customers are from North America, Europe and Japan. The company has
earned USD 145 million in the year 2015 as revenue. AFL is the pioneer of the footwear exports
in Bangladesh and also has a stronghold in the local market and second only to BATA. The
organization was approved by government in 1993 and employs over 9000 persons currently. Apex
is currently ensuring nationwide coverage with over 191 retail outlets and 380 authorized retailers.
It has also nine in house brands and one international brand namely Twinkler, Sprint, Maverick,
Moochie, Nino Rossi, SchoolSmart, Venturini, Apex, Sandra Rosa, and Dr. Mauch. Apex carries
a large selection of shoes, sandals and non-footwear items through these to ensure the right product
for its customers.

Apex Adelchi Footwear Limited’s Head Office located at Gulshan-1, Dhaka, Bangladesh. And the
production plant is located in Shafipur, Kaliakoir, Gazipur.

History

The word “apex” literally means peak of something. Since its inception in 1975 it has been
constantly trying to keep up with its name. Apex Footwear Limited started its business operations
on January, 1990 with the hand of Syed Manzur Elahi. Soon in 1993 it listed itself in Dhaka Stock
Exchange. Fast forward in 2006 it allied itself with an Italian company and renamed itself as Apex
Adelchi Footwear Limited. With the combining capacity of both its daily production reached to
10,000 pairs per day in 2007 and 15,000 in 2008. Again on 2013 it changed its named back to
Apex Footwear Limited. Recently in 2015 it celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Vision

Honest Growth – The vision of Apex Footwear Limited is named thus in order to show the moral
principle it holds in term of business development.

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Mission

 To ensure sustainable growth

 To be a vendor of choice for our customers
 To create value for our shareholders
 To be proactively compliant with global best practices & standards
 To be a responsible corporate citizen

Values

1. Integrity
a. Honesty
b. Walk the talk Sense of Urgency
c. Strive for speed and simplicity in everything we do
2. Empowerment
a. Proactive compliance
b. Strong employee hold
c. Employee satisfaction guaranteed
3. Courage
a. To achieve higher goals
b. Maximize efficiency and effectiveness

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 Organizational Hierarchy

Figure: List of Directors

Apex Adelchi Footwear Limited’s current employee number is 9000. They have currently 06
directors, among them four of them are Bangladeshi citizens. They also had an independent
Bangladeshi director, Late Mr. Samson H. Chowdhury.

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 Figure: List of Management team

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 Organizational Structure
Accounts and Finance Department
The principle goal of the Accounts and Finance is overseeing and dispersing the assets for every
one of the branches of the organizations as effectively as possible. Other responsibilities
incorporate, computing the expense of the creation and paying up the suppliers as well as payroll,
financial statements and controls.

Human Resource Department

All the development activities of the employees and workers of the factory as well as the head
office are controlled and managed by the department. Activities of factory personnel are looked
after by an assistant manager located in the factory at Gazipur. But main Human Resource
Department is in Head Office and from here all the direction goes to the assistant manager.

International Business
This is the department where I completed my internship. The department deals with the
international customers of apex namely ABC, Bata, Steve Madden, Deichmann, Lederundschuh
etc. This department works as a liaison between the customers and the company. Few of the tasks
of the department is getting the orders and do the order entry for the production. It also manages
the customized orders of the products.

IT Department
The IT department is vital for Apex’s works. It manages the internal server and all the
technological aspects of the work processes.

There are also other departments like the Commercial Department, Labelling Department etc.

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 Operational Process
As a production oriented company the operational process of quite complicated. But the main
factions and processes can be understood from the following chart:

The chart shows the productions facility’s processes in a concise manner. The raw materials are
imported from Pakistan, Korea, Thailand, Russia and Australia. Some are also from the Apex
Tannery. The production plant consists of four main divisions namely Cutting, Assembling,
Lasting and Finishing. My job as intern mainly deals with the Finishing section.

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 International Business Department
The Employees
The department that I worked under is International Business (IB). Since Apex Footwear Ltd.
exports all of its productions to foreign customers, most of its affairs are related and undertaken
by this department. There are total 9 employees in this department with one intern. The head being
Mr. Nasrullah Sabbir, the Manager of IB; Ms. Tahseen Farhan, Asst. Manager; Sayeed Ibrahim,
Ehtiaz Karim and Auneea Haque being Executive at Sales; Fabia U-Shah, Nazmus Sadat, Zakir
Hossain and Sadman Hossain are Executives at Order.

Department’s Alliances
The IB department works closely with the Material Planning Department. It also has to work hand
in hand with the IT department as well since all of its works are done through Apex’s internal
server.

Customers of Apex Footwear Limited

There are almost 120 customers of Apex Footwear Ltd. From all over the globe. It is really tough
therefore to maintain all these customers. For this purpose they have agents to act as the middleman
between them. There are six agents namely Carine, Fernando, Luke, Jim, Massimo and Danielle.
These agents keep in contact with the customers constantly. One of their task is to translate and
convert the orders placed by the customers into their own formats. These orders are then transferred
to Apex Footwear’s International Business department to standardize into their own readable
format.

Importance of Order Processing

Besides getting orders from customers it is also the responsibility of the department to follow up
on processes of production as well as the customers. It is crucial that the department maintain the
timeline given by the customers to process the orders and send to the production department. As
soon as they receive those information’s, they start the production process. Production is a
continuous process so any mistake in those order processing can cause massive disruptions and
losses for the whole company.

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 Assignments at Apex
My assignment at Apex had been three folded. I had to work both at head office in Gulshan and
factory at Gazipur. My assignments were:

1) Sample Entry – Head Office

2) Order Entry – Head Office
3) Pictorial Presentation – Factory

Sample Entry
These are the samples of the various products that are and can be produced from Apex. Samples
are customizable in terms of leather, lust, outsole designs etc. The information of these samples
are entered in the server for the agents to procure and translate for the customers. A typical sample
entry paper is shown below:

Figure: A Sample Entry Sheet

In a sample entry sheet there are over 20 different data that are need to be input in the server for
the use of every related individuals. Some of those data includes:

1. Article Number 4. Order Line 7. Customer Name

2. Sample Number 5. Sock and Sole 8. BOM
3. Leather Types 6. Dates

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Order Entry
These are the final entries that are provided by the customer to the company for production. The
orders processed by the companies are in their own language (French, German etc.). They forward
those orders to the agents who translate them to Apex. The IB department then manually take those
orders and enter them to the order entry server for the production house to use. For this process some
help from the tech sheen is also taken. Full description of which will be provided in the next section.
A sample order sheet is provided below:

Figure: A Sample Order Sheet

The name of the information that are provided here are almost the same as the previous one Sample
Entry. The difference is a Sample sheet is provided to the customers by Apex and an Order sheet is
provided by the customers to Apex.

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 Figure: A Sample Order Entry Form

In the figure above a sample order entry form is shown which it taken from Apex Footwear Limited’s
own server. After the input from the order sheet in the previous figure this page then directly
transmitted to the production facility where the specifications can be easily traced out. Although I
myself have to work on the further simplification and standardization of the production process at the
finishing level with a pictorial presentation. This is explained in the next section.

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Pictorial Presentation
Out of the three tasks at the office the most important assignment and the one for which I was
employed specially was the Pictorial Presentation. At the time of interview for the internship, my
interviewer informed me about the job.

The workers at the production facility are mostly uneducated. The order sheets that are sent will not
be of any benefit for them since they cannot read or write, therefore they will not understand the
specifications of it. It is my responsibility to create a picture presentation for them which will be
easily accessible to them and also standardize the way they will continue the productions.

Figure: A Sample Pictorial Presentation

A copy of one of the pictorial presentation is attached in the appendix section of this report.

The section of the production facility where my presentation is necessitated is the Finishing or
Labelling department. After the making of the shoe the customizable portions are what included from
the pictorial that I created. The customizable parts are the colors, boxes, labels, sizes, instructions etc.

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For the purpose I take the help of the Tech Sheet mentioned in earlier and match them with the actual
produced item. For the purpose I need to visit the production facility at Gazipur and meet the
production line manager. At the production line I take out a random sample of the product and match
with the tech sheet. Then I take pictures of the shoes’ various parts matching them with the
instructions and produce the pictorial presentation. A sample tech sheet is shown:

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 Learning from the Internship
Before I was joining Apex Footwear Limited, I did not know what a corporate world resembled and
also unaware how a business or an enterprise functions. In any case, today, following three months,
I can safely presume that I have taken in a ton of things that I was not acquainted with.

Presentation of Understandable Information: I have realized that while working in a corporate

environment and dealing with lowly educated workers, how important it is to present information
molding in a way which is easily accessible and unambiguous. From this project I learned the art of
communicating with the ground level undereducated population of our country as I had to
communicate the final labelling and packaging instructions in the best possible manner clearly
understandable for them.

Self-Evaluation: Professional environment teaches a person to evaluate himself through the eyes of
his peers, inferiors and superiors by putting himself in their positions. Through this internship I got
to evaluate the amount of work I had done and areas of improvements. I plan to work and improve
my skills in the future learning from here.

Time Management: One of the most important lesson that I learned from this internship is the
management of time and proper punctuality. During my undergraduate period all my classes were
during the noon or afternoon. So sudden changes in work hours made me punctual to attend office at
9.00 am sharp. Although it was tough at the beginning but now I am used to it. It made me utilize the
day properly. So I think Internship has made me a more punctual person than I was in life.

Appreciating Hard Work: There were times when I had to sit through all the day to finish my task in
time. There were also times when I had to do overtime in order to manage other works. At that
situation it was my driving force that my peers and elders appreciated my hard work and motivated
to perfection. Sometime monetary payment is not the only thing a person looks for. Acknowledgment
of someone’s hard work and praising him for that makes the hard work worth it. It makes the person
more motivated and ambitious.

Constant Improvement of Self: It is really tough to keep up with the corporate world and even
tougher to climb up the ladder especially if you are ambitious. One has to keep on his toes constantly
to improve himself and compete with his co-workers.

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 Interaction with Co-workers
Friendly Working Environment: The working environment was really friendly. Probably it as mainly
because almost all the co-workers were from North South University as well and were also young.
They welcomed my happily on the first day and also presented me with chocolates.

Celebrating Birthdays: We also celebrated each other’s birthday when they came. We all gathered
fund together and bough cakes and food. We also took pictures together.

Lunch Outings: Although we had our own cafeteria at the office we sometimes went out to some
good restaurants for lunch. It strengthened our bond and understanding of each other.

Support and Guidance: My co-workers and supervisor also acted as guide throughout my journey.
Whenever I faced any difficulty they helped my merrily and made my task really easy and fun.

Dealing with Difficulties

The work experience at Apex was fairly good for any difficulties. So I barely faced problems in my
three months’ work period except one.

Visiting to the production facility was a hectic job for me. The place was really far from my residence
as well as the head-office. It was at Gazipur, Kaliyakoir which was almost 35 kilometers outside
Dhaka city. It took almost 3 to 4 hours to reach there and almost the same if not more to get back to
the city. So in order to reach there early we had to start from Dhaka very early in the morning.
Unfortunately I was the one to be picked up first among others and dropped off last. So I had to wake
up at around five in the morning and was picked up at six.

We reached the facility at around 10.00 am. Although my work there usually finished within 2 to 3
hours but I had to wait till other executives finished their job. We started from office at around seven
in the afternoon and was dropped home at almost 11.00 to 12.00 pm.

It is usually tough to keep up with this routine but I was grateful I only had to visit the factory only
once in a week. After a couple of weeks I decided I would only visit the factory the day when none
other executives are visiting. So I would be able get out of there as soon as I finished my work.

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 Expectations vs. Reality
Prior to my internship I have heard so many things about internship from my friends and teachers
alike. Some of those were that interns are made to work clerical stuffs and are always undervalued in
the workplace. Some of them even complained of been behaved badly by the official staffs. On the
other hand some even said they had absolutely no work to do at the office. Either they just bored
away all that valuable times or did not go to office at all.

Listening to all these I tried to imagine how my own internship would go. But when I finally started
my office, the reality was different. My office environment was really good, co-workers were really
friendly and I had real job to do at the office. I was not too burdened with tasks that I could not handle
and also I did not waste away my time in boredom. It was a middle way between both and I had an
amazing time altogether.

Influence on Career Plan

To be honest I have not thought much about my future and career plans seriously before my
internship. But being in touch with corporate personalities all the time taught me the importance of
planning the future ahead.

Pursue Opportunities: My upcoming plan is to look for opportunities in any good institution where
I can exploit my talents for the betterment. For the purpose I have already started looking for various
opportunities on various places. Internship also tough me the necessity of creating network and
socialize with them.

Higher Studies: In my near future, I plan to get enrolled in a Masters in any sector of HR or Marketing
program. During my Masters, I would like to work any administrative jobs, so that the experience I
have gained during my internship will be helpful to me.

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 Conclusion
I have had an experience of a lifetime working at Apex Footwear Limited. Working in the
International Business department has equipped me with valuable learning on how production houses
operate, international customers order, managing clients and implemented and external agents who
assist the flow of business are handled. Other than professional learning, I have also had the
opportunity to nurture my interpersonal skills such as teamwork, communication, time management
and pressure handling.

If I had anything to change about my experience, I would have lengthened the time of the internship
period so that I could learn more and deeper about the vital aspects of the works done.

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 APPENDIX

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