Learning and Developmental Plan

Self-Introduction

I consider myself an ordinary human with extra-ordinary dreams. At birth, my parents named me Mahender Bandi. This name was not something that I opted for myself, but it certainly became a huge part of my identity. I belong to India, a country where most of the life decisions are guided by societal norms. Yet, I decided to defy those societal norms and instead chose to follow my heart. Belonging to a collectivistic culture, it was a difficult decision to take, but I am sure I will never regret doing so. I strongly believe that one cannot succeed by following the masses, but rather one needs to follow his own conscience.

I was born and raised in a middle-class household. My family consists of my parents, my brother and I. My father is a businessman and runs a mechanical workshop. On the other hand, my mother is a housewife. As far as my brother is concerned, he works in a private firm. Despite having limited means of earning and facing severe financial hardships, our parents invested in providing us with quality education.

It is because of my parents’ efforts and my own hard work that I manage to complete my bachelors in mechanical engineering. I had to work day and night to turn this dream into a reality and, I did it. Currently, I am working as a junior design engineer in Winwill technical services. In the future, I aim to establish my career in the manufacturing industry as it is my area of interest.

Megatrends and Challenges

Global economy is undergoing a tough time and so are all the industries. Currently, the pandemic, COVID-19 has strained the manufacturing industry. The supply chains around the world have been halted. As several key raw materials used to come from China, this pandemic has disturbed the supply chain. Someone rightly pointed out, “China is integral to nearly every sector of the global economy” (Sohrabi et al., 2020, p.74). Until or unless the manufacturers won’t get the raw materials, they cannot manufacture the goods.

For high value and critical goods, manufacturers get the raw materials through air cargo. Since a lot of countries have suspended their flight operations, it has become a hassle for manufacturers of such goods to get supplies for their end-product. Likewise, it has even become more expensive to get the supplies through air cargo. According to the journal of commerce, “air cargo rates from Shanghai to North America have jumped 70% compared to a year ago and Shanghai to Europe have hit a five-year high, even though oil prices are down markedly” (Knowler, 2020). India is one such country which gets its pharmaceutical ingredients from China. So when flight operations stopped in India, the pharmaceutical industry in the country phased a lot of trouble in getting supplies from China.