During the summer of 2023, I completed an internship at Daimler Truck North America, one of the largest commercial truck manufacturers in the world. I was brought onto the team at the Fort Mill, South Carolina office as a Sales & Marketing Product Development Intern for the Aftermarket Service Products (ASP) Department. This department specializes in extended coverage options for customers of one of DTNA's brands, specifically Freightliner Trucks and Western Star Trucks. 

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During my time as an intern, I gained valuable insight to the inner workings of an international business. I had the opportunity to attend company brand workshops and team meetings that focused on new product development and new product marketing. Along with this, I was assigned one project that I would spend most of my internship working on: the Product Development Process Map for the Aftermarket Service Products Department. In order to complete this project, I had to schedule meetings with members of different teams within ASP, including the Costing, Operations, Marketing, Pricing, and Controlling teams, among others, to determine the specific steps each team completed during the process of developing a new product. While I was mapping this entire process out, I was also looking for any inefficiencies or unnecessary steps that slowed the process down, and audited it. The process map that I completed and presented to the ASP Leadership team at the end of the summer was a revised process flow which addressed the issues that plagued the existing product development process. 

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In between working on the process map and attending meetings, I was able to take a few trips to DTNA's local manufacturing plants. I was able to see a component manufacturing plant in Gastonia, NC, a medium-duty truck manufacturing plant in Mt. Holly, NC, as well as the Thomas Built Buses manufacturing plant in High Point, NC. Being able to travel to different locations to learn more about the company and its operations was very interesting, and it gave me a much better understanding of the business and industry I was working in.