Internship with Daimler South East Asia

The 22 week Industrial Attachment programme is a core module of the Engineering Undergraduate degree at Nanyang Technological University. The following report presents the projects undertaken by the author and the tasks performed by him at his attachment organisation – Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. from 9th July, 2012 to 8th December, 2012. During his attachment at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd., the author worked on multiple projects for their Information Technology Infrastructure-Overseas department under the supervision of their Technical Manager of Singapore. The main projects undertaken by the author involved: * Following up with users in the Singapore Organisational units on migration of user mailboxes from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. * Ensuring Network Compliance for the Active Directory of the Singapore division of Daimler AG according to policies laid down by the headquarters at Stuttgart, Germany. * Developing and implementing an online booking system for meeting rooms and equipment for various departments. The author also worked on other projects which are briefly discussed in this report.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, the author would like to thank Nanyang Technological University’s Career and Attachment Office for their efforts in sourcing the Industrial attachment with Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. The author is extremely thankful to Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. and Mr. Ryan Ong, the author’s supervisor, for providing him a wonderful learning experience through this attachment. Mr. Ryan Ong played an important role in the author’s industrial attachment by – providing challenging projects with the freedom to operate independently and make decisions, besides giving timely valuable criticism and explaining queries patiently to help understand the author’s projects better, thereby guiding him through the course of this attachment. The author is also thankful to his colleagues at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. – Mr. Liang Zhanrong, Ms. Hyacinth Pichay, Mr. Clinston Tan and Mr. Shaun Tay for their assistance and support during the attachment. Last but not the least, the author is highly grateful to Prof. Yvonne Lam Ying Hung, his attachment supervisor from Nanyang Technological University, for her interest and support for the attachment. The author would like to thank Prof. Yvonne Lam Ying Hung for taking time out of her busy schedule to visit him at his workplace and provide valuable constructive feedback which encouraged him to strive better.

LIST OF FIGURES USED

Fig 1.Outlook poster prepared for display across common areas in office Fig 2.Follow-up email sent by users to ensure successful migration Fig 3.Spread sheet shared among the management on Migration progress Fig 4.Push installation performed to install Lync using SDWI Fig 5.SSDM tool
being run to transfer archive and encrypted emails to Outlook Fig 6.Archive emails made available to users after running SSDM Fig 7.Conformity report generated monthly by the Active Directory Service Desk Fig 8.UsersIrregular list created using admin.NET

Fig 9. Removal of irregular user accounts using admin.NET
Fig 10.Clients Invalid Name report generated from admin.NET Fig 11.Account locked in admin.NET and deleted 2 weeks later from AD Fig 12.Pinging server names to check their existence in the network Fig 13. Removing locked/unused servers from AD

Fig 14. PasswordNeverExpiresWOExceptions report generated from admin.NET Fig 15.Modifying accounts to comply with standard password policy Fig 16. Details of client machines obtained from HP Asset manager Fig 17.Creation of resources in WAMS

Fig 18.Workflow for meeting room booking
Fig 19. Workflow for equipment booking

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 PURPOSE

The present report describes all the projects undertaken and the tasks performed by the author during his 22 week industrial attachment at Daimler South East Asia. The present report also details the valuable work experience gained besides the various skills learnt during the attachment.

1.2 SCOPE

The present report explains the details of the author’s primary projects which involved following up with users on migration of mailboxes from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook, ensuring the Active Directory (AD) of Singapore division of Daimler AG was compliant with policies and regulations laid down by the headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany and implementing an online booking system for meeting rooms and equipment. The present report elaborates on the steps which the author took to understand his projects, the problems faced, the steps taken to resolve the problems, the decisions made, the solutions that the author came up with and the experience and knowledge gained. The present report also elaborates on the other projects that the author undertook during his industrial attachment at Daimler South East Asia.

2. PROJECTS

2.1. MICROSOFT OUTLOOK MIGRATION
Daimler AG had been using IBM Lotus Notes as the email client and IBM Sametime Connect as the instant messaging client throughout its global network. The Daimler AG headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany had announced the transfer of its users from Lotus Notes and Sametime Connect to Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Lync respectively from 2012. The project was being rolled out for the Singapore division from end-July 2012 to mid-Aug 2012. The migration process took place in batches of users every day. The migration of users was initiated at 8pm every day and the process would have been completed by 8am the following day. The author was responsible for following up with users on their migration status and resolving issues, if any, related to the migration. He attended weekly meetings with the members of the project, discussed weekly progress and provided feedback on issues faced. 2.1.1 FOLLOW UP WITH USERS

Along with his colleagues, the author prepared and stuck posters (Fig 1) in common areas across the office providing users with key details about the migration.

Fig 1. Outlook poster prepared for display across common areas in office. The author sent emails (Fig 2) to users every day, who had been scheduled for migration the day earlier, to ensure successful migration. The email also provided users with information on Outlook user guide, created by the author’s colleagues; to help users understand the features available in Outlook and troubleshooting measures for common issues.

Fig 2. Follow-up email sent by users to ensure successful migration. A migration from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook was considered successful, if a user could send and receive emails through Outlook. Similarly, the migration from Sametime Connect to Microsoft Lync was considered successful, if the user could sign in to Lync and chat with users within the Daimler network. The author recorded the users’ response and consolidated them into a spread sheet (as shown in Fig 3) based on the following criteria: * Users and groups with successful migration were marked as Yes. * Users and groups that had been exempted from the migration were listed as NA. * Users and groups that faced problems were marked as No.

Fig 3. Spread sheet shared among the management on Migration progress. Every day, the author sent updates to the members of the project on the migration attaching the above spread sheet. The spread sheet was also shared online on Share point with the management to monitor the progress of the project.

2.1.1 RESOLVING ISSUES
During the migration follow-up, the author was notified by the users about problems which they had encountered. The author responded to the users by email and in some cases, personally attended to users to get detailed description of the problem and solve simple issues. He analysed the issues faced by the users and tried solving most of them by himself. Issues which were beyond the scope of the users’ knowledge, were forwarded by him to the Local User Helpdesk – which was either solved by Onsite Engineers or escalated to the headquarters in Germany. Brief descriptions of the issues solved by the author are as follows: * Microsoft Lync missing:

During the initial stages of migration, the author found that the Microsoft Lync communicator had not been installed In User machines after the migration. The author performed a push installation of Microsoft Lync to the users’ computer using an office application named SDWI (Fig 4).

Fig 4. Push installation performed to install Lync using SDWI.

To ensure that the same problem would not be faced again, the author performed push installation of Lync all user computers a day prior to the migration. This resolved the issue of missing Lync after the migration and was not reported thereafter.

* Emails older than 30 days not transferred:
Under the migration project, emails which were 30 days older than the migration date were not transferred to users’ Outlook mailbox. In order to transfer older and archive emails from Lotus notes to Outlook, the author ran the Self-service desktop migrator (SSDM) application (Fig 5), an application which had been provided by the headquarters at Germany to transfer archive and encrypted emails to Outlook, on the user machines. Fig 5. SSDM tool being run to transfer archive and encrypted emails to Outlook.

After selecting the necessary options in SSDM, the archive emails was made available to users in their Outlook mailboxes under a new folder by the name of Lotus Notes emails as observed in Fig 6.

Fig 6. Archive emails made available to users after running SSDM.

At the end of the migration project, the author had consolidated the migration status of the Singapore users, the issues that had been faced, and the actions performed to fix the various issues. A detailed report of the same was passed on to the management to be used for the migration rollout in other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

2.2 NETWORK COMPLIANCE

The business units of Daimler AG are split into 3 regions – EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), APAC (Asia Pacific) and NAFTA (North and South America). The main headquarters of Daimler AG is present in Stuttgart, Germany while Singapore is the headquarters for the Asia Pacific business units. The Singapore division has 3 organizational units, namely: * A128 – Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd.

* A481 – Daimler Financial Services.
* A830 – Mercedes Benz Financial services.
The author of this report was assigned with the responsibility of ensuring that the Active directory in Singapore, and thereby the 3 organizational units, were compliant in all aspects with the policies and regulations laid down by the headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. Whenever an object is in violation of any company protocols, it is listed under a report named after the protocol violated in a SQL database (called the active directory) that can be accessed using the Daimler AG administrative tool called admin.NET. The local administrator of the Organizational units can view reports restricted to their responsibility area. Objects listed as erroneous under each compliance report had to be resolved before the number of objects listed reached a certain threshold percentage level, failing which the status of the compliance report will be escalated to warning or critical condition depending on the threshold percentages set for each compliance report.

Organizational unit (OU) conformity status report is sent to the OU administrator along with the conformity score at the end of every month. A conformity score of 100 means that all reports are OK and none are in a critical or warning situation and a score of 0 means all reports are critical. The author’s project objective was to improve the conformity score for all the organizational units to 100. Sometimes non-complaint objects in Active Directory could not be fixed with reasonable effort, so no improvement of the conformity status can be achieved in a short term. In such cases business units can raise exceptions from the Active Directory Service Desk. Exceptions will expire after a limited time (max. one year) but renewal is possible. The monthly AD conformity report contains the status of the protocols for the conformity report along with the description of exceptions raised as shown in Fig 7.

Fig 7. Conformity report generated monthly by the Active Directory Service Desk. The following table shows the compliance status of the organizational units A128, A481 and A830 when the author began work on the compliance reports from July 2012. Organisational Unit| Conformity score

An elaborate description of some of the compliance reports that the author worked on during the course of his attachment are as follows:

2.2.1 COMPLIANCE REPORT – UsersIrregular

* Rule:
Non Corporate Directory (CD) based account names must start with <TopLevelOUName_>, CD-based user accounts have to be deleted within the grace period after decommissioning in CD. CD-based user accounts must correspond to an existing CD-User ID

* Description:
This report shows the total number of irregular user objects. An irregular user object fulfils one of the following three criteria: i) The Daimler naming convention for non-Corporate Directory (CD) based user accounts is violated (“Invalid Name”). ii) A CD object was deprovisioned and deleted and the grace period of 3 month for the existence of the CD-based user object in AD has expired (“Deletion Grace Period Expired”). The warning threshold is 10%, the critical threshold is 20%.

* Risk:
i) AD user objects must have a unique name. In order to assure coexistence of many plants and business units in the global AD, the Daimler AD naming conventions provide a separate namespace for each location. User accounts with non-conform names should be renamed to avoid problems. ii) After a specified period of time CD based user objects deleted in CD must be deleted in AD, too. These accounts are a potential security risk and violate Daimler corporate policies.

* Solution:
The author used the Admin.NET report “UsersIrregular” to generate list of these faulty accounts and to decommission them (Fig 8). Fig 8. UsersIrregular list created using admin.NET

* The author observed that most of the accounts featured on this list included users who had transferred or departed from the company. But, the accounts had not been removed from the AD following the deletion scheduled deletion period. The author deleted these user accounts using admin.NET as shown in Fig 9.

Fig 9. Removal of irregular user accounts using admin.NET.
* The author conducted enquiries on accounts with invalid name (not following the user naming convention) and found that these accounts had been created for testing and training purposes. The author filed these accounts for exemption.

2.2.2 COMPLIANCE REPORT – ClientsInvalidName

* Rule:
Client account name must start with “C/M<Location ID>” eg. C128D54608PS

* Description:
This report shows the total number of clients with an invalid name. Any computer account where the operating system information does not contain “Server” or the name does not start with “S” or “T” is checked. Client names must start with “C” or “M”, followed by the three-character location identifier present in the Top-Level OU name. For example, the name of a client located in the Top-Level OU A128 must start with “C128”. The warning threshold is 1%, the critical threshold is 10%.

* Risk:
If naming conventions are violated, the computer cannot be associated to the responsibility area. Scripts and software distribution tools may make use of the location code. If the client name does not start with M or C it complicates development of tools and scripts and may circumvent implementation of global processes and management tools. Although a single false named computer account does not have a serious impact on Active Directory, every single account might not be in scope of certain mechanisms that require conform computer names (collections in Software Distribution, etc.). Correctly named computers help to * identify object types or object location by name,

* allow for tool based mass actions.

* Solution:
In order to identify clients with invalid names the Admin.NET Report “ClientsInvalidName” was generated by the user. Fig 10. displays the list of clients with invalid names.

Fig 10. Clients Invalid Name report generated from admin.NET.

Firstly, the invalid clients had to be located by the author to determine if they existed in the network. If the client was active, then it was renamed and if the client was inactive then it was scheduled for deletion. The author checked the names of the invalid clients using the Daimler AG office application – SDWI to determine the last login user and thereby the client’s location.

* The author found multiple entries of a single machine but using different naming conventions (since Daimler AG had revised its naming convention in the past). He removed the clients which featured the old naming convention and ensured that only clients with the latest naming convention existed in the Active Directory. * Also, the author located machines which were running on Windows XP. Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. had shifted from Windows XP to Windows 7 in the beginning of 2012. Few clients meant for testing purposes alone ran on Windows XP, whereas other XP machines had been disposed by the company.

The user identified the non-testing purpose machines and removed them from the active directory; and raised exceptions for clients used for testing purposes. * The author inquired with the Infosys team on the names of their Indian PCs which did not feature the regular naming convention (the most likely company with to have invalid client names in the active directory since Daimler hires lot of contracted employees from Infosys, who are stationed in India). The author locked the clients which were confirmed to be inactive, along with those whose status was unknown for a period of 2 weeks. If after 2 weeks, no objection had been raised the clients were deleted from the active directory (Fig 11).

Fig 11. Account locked in admin.NET and deleted 2 weeks later from AD.

2.2.3 COMPLIANCE REPORT – ServersPotUnused365

* Rule:
The server did not logon to the domain for more than 365 days. This indicates a stale computer account.

* Description:
This report shows the total number of server computer accounts in Active Directory (AD) which were potentially not used for more than one year. A server is considered as unused if the number of days since last logon, last password change or object creation is greater than 365. These criteria are evaluated for enabled as well as disabled computers. The warning threshold is 10%, the critical threshold is 25%.

* Risk/Benefit:
A server which is joined to the domain will initially set several account properties which will be updated regularly during usual server activity. Inactive servers will no longer update these objects attributes. Although a single, non-used (outdated) server account does not pose a serious condition in Active Directory, a significant amount of dead accounts affects the reliability of AD and Server Management System (SMS) report data. A clean environment helps to * gain more reliability and comparability on reporting data, * reduce SMS discovery overhead during processing, event logging, and data storing, * keep physical AD database file smaller and speed up AD searches and provide clear view when listing client objects.

* Solution:
The Admin.NET report “ServersPotUnused365” was used to derive a list of affected servers by the author.

Firstly, he tried to locate the servers by pinging them from Command prompt as demonstrated in Fig 12.

Fig 12. Pinging server names to check their existence in the network

* Servers existing in the network responded to the ping. The author compiled the list of servers which pinged back and forwarded it to his supervisor for raising exceptions, since these servers had to exist in the network. * For the servers which failed to ping back and the ones which could not be located by the author, he contacted the Server team to determine the location of these machines. Active servers were filed for exception whereas servers, confirmed as unused/inactive, were locked for a period of one month, following which they were deleted from the AD as indicated in Fig 13.

Fig 13. Removing locked/unused servers from AD

2.2.4 COMPLIANCE REPORT – PasswordNeverExpiresWOE

* Rule:
A user account’s password must expire after 30 days.

* Description:
This report shows the total number of user accounts with non-expiring password. The Daimler Security policy requires that all user accounts have to change their passwords after 30 days. Exceptions have to be reported to CoC Identity Management and can be excluded from the reports after approval. The warning threshold is 5%, the critical threshold is 10%.

* Risk:
Accounts without expiring passwords violate Daimler Corporate password policies. Active Directory (AD) has to allow the anonymous listing of the names of all user accounts to support Windows NT4 systems. An attacker could get access to user resources if he’s able to guess a password. To minimize this risk, a password policy was defined that requires a complex password which has to be changed every 30 days. User accounts with non-expiring passwords impose a potential security risk and must be reconfigured to use standard password settings.

* Solution:
The author ran the Admin.NET report “PasswordNeverExpiresWOExceptions” to generate a list of such accounts and to modify the account properties (Fig 14).

Fig 14. PasswordNeverExpiresWOExceptions report generated from admin.NET

Once the list of erroneous accounts was obtained, the author sent emails to the respective users informing them about the Daimler Corporate password policy. He modified the account settings using Account options available in admin.NET as shown in Fig 15. Upon unchecking the Password never expires option, the accounts were set to the standard password accounts.

Fig 15. Modifying accounts to comply with standard password policy The users were later notified again about the changes made to their accounts, where after their passwords shall expire after every 30days.

2.2.5 OTHER COMPLIANCE REPORTS

The author also worked on other compliance reports which were similar to the reports discussed in the earlier sections. The ServersInvalidName compliance report generated a list of servers which ddi not follow the standard naming convention. The course of action was similar to that of ClientsInvalidName, except that the author checked with the Server team on the existence of the machines and the account was locked for a period of one month prior to deletion from the AD. Clientspotunused365 was a compliance report which generated list of client computers not used in the past 365 days. The author undertook similar action, as in the case of Serverspotunused365. But, in this case the author checked the physical location of the computers using HP Asset manager, software used to maintain the IT inventory by the Local User Help Desk (Fig 16).

Fig 16. Details of client machines obtained from HP Asset manager. Based on the following status of the clients returned by the software, the author undertook the necessary actions: * Retired: When a machine was listed as retired, the author deleted the machine directly from the Active directory since the machine had been disposed earlier by the company. * In use: Clients listed in use were verified for their existence by checking directly with the respective users listed under Asset manager. Exception was created to accommodate active machines. * Stock: The warning threshold for Clientspotunsed365 was calculated. If the number of clients listed as stock was lower than this value, the author left these clients untouched. When the number of clients was more than the warning threshold, the author forwarded the names of these clients to his supervisor.

The author helped in improving the AD conformity score every month. Irregular clients, servers and accounts appeared in the conformity report every month. But, the author was able to suppress all critical issues in the first month and worked on reducing issues in the Warning condition. By the end of November, he had achieved conformity score of 100 for A128 and A481. A831 could not reach a score of 100 due to server issues, which require at least 1 month for correction, appeared in end of October. 2.3. ONLINE RESOURCE BOOKING SYSTEM

Users at Daimler AG had an online system in Lotus Notes to book meeting rooms and equipment that were needed for meetings. Following the migration of users from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook in August, there was no online booking system available for the users. The author was handed over the responsibility of proposing an online booking system for the resources i.e. rooms and equipment in Outlook to the Administration department. Using WAMS, an office application of Daimler AG, resources could be created which would appear later in the Outlook address book. Given the sufficient access rights, users can open the resource calendar and book meeting rooms, similar to sending meeting requests among other people. The author explored the different capabilities and features available in Outlook calendar to plan a suitable online system. He obtained details from the administration on the ownership of the resources, specifications of the equipment, and facilities in the rooms that were needed to create resources in WAMS as shown in Fig 17. Fig 17. Creation of resources in WAMS

* The users with Book-In policy received access rights to book a resource by simply sending a meeting request to the resource listed in the address book. * The users with Request-In policy could request for booking a resource by sending a meeting request to the resource from their address book. * Users listed under Resource delegate had the rights to approve requests for usage of resources. The author carried out test-runs with his colleagues by providing them with necessary access rights and devised a online booking system. Between th October, 2012 and th November, 2012 the author had meetings with the administration to demonstrate the working of his booking system and to collect feedback on its feasibility. According to the booking system developed by the author:

* Users had access to book resources from the resource calendar but could not edit appointment made in the calendar. This was necessary to ensure that users did not cancel each other’s appointment to use a meeting room which would cause clashes. * Users could book the resources only 3 months from the date of booking. This rule was implemented to promote fair usage of the resources as some users would book way in advance and prevent other users from booking the resource. * Equipment could not be booked directly as it was necessary for the administration to keep track on the equipment usage. Request for equipment was approved by the administration based on the nature of the meeting and necessity for the equipment. Though the initial response from the administration was positive, the major concern raised by the administration was that user information in a booked time-slot was visible only to the administration and not to other users. If user information was available among users on booked time-slot, users could negotitate on the usage of meeting room. This was solved by implementing a rule to include the name of the organiser and his/her extension number under the location field in meeting requests. The workflow for the online system is demonstrated below:

All meeting rooms are open for booking to all users i.e. all users were given Book-In policy. Meeting organisers’ can book any meeting room using the following workflow.

Fig18. Workflow for meeting room booking
For equipment to be used in the meetings, it was necessary that the administrator approve the request for the usage of the equipment i.e all users were given Request-in policy and the administration department was the resource delegate. This is explained by the workflow below:

Fig 19. Workflow for equipment booking
Once the booking system was approved for use by the administration, a pool of users were selected for a pilot run from November to December with plans of implementing the system in January based on feedback from these pilot users. The author conducted training sessions for these pilot users and provided them with user guides for their references. He discussed weekly progress with the administration on the pilot run. Only one issue raised by a pilot user, who was not granted access to the resources, required the assistance of the author. The user’s name was later included in the Book-In policy for meeting rooms and Request-In policy for equipment. Thereafter, the user did not encounter any problems with the booking system. Other problems faced by the users were small and the solutions were available in the user guide.

2.4. OTHER PROJECTS

Apart from the 3 main projects that have been discussed earlier, the author also worked on other projects which are briefly explained below: * ITM forms:

The author documented all the IT management request forms as and when required. The author also placed requests for IT hardware equipment as and when required to do so on behalf of the Technical Manager of Singapore. In order to reduce the workflow of IT management requests and making it more effective, the author consolidated the purchases of all software and hardware equipment made between 2009 and 2011 and proposed changes in the current request forms.

* Enterprise Architecture Planning:
The author assisted the Chief Information Officer at Daimler South East Asia for the Enterprise architecture planning (EAP). Using an office application called BeePRM, the author prepared a detailed report on the licensing fee and past purchases of the various software used by the employees of Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. The report was used by the Chief Information Officer in the EAP for the subsequent year.

* Demo session for Samsung Sur 40:
The author organised a demo session for Samsung SUR 40 to demonstrate the capabilities of Microsoft Pixel Sense to the business users. He gathered feedback from the attendees on the potential usage of Microsoft Pixel Sense in business areas, consolidated it and presented it to the management for their consideration.

* Asset consolidation:
The author verified the existence and ownership of the IT hardware under various users, for the annual procedure to reconcile all IT assets at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd. He assisted his colleagues in maintaining the IT inventory by locating missing IT hardware and printing and labelling asset tags for IT hardware. * Management of VoIP Phones:

The author maintained the list of voice over IP (VoIP) phones used at Daimler
South East Asia Pte. Ltd. He updated the list to keep track of the asset movement. He occasionally performed factory reset of voice over IP (VoIP) phones before deployment to users.

* Management of ROVA tokens:
ROVA is a two-factor authentication token used by the employees at Daimler AG for logging into the Daimler Network from outside the network. The author filed request forms for ROVA tokens, updated the list ROVA tokens being used and ensured that the tokens were functioning properly before deployment to users.

* Cost Centre Update:
A list of Singapore users featuring incorrect Cost Centre within the Daimler AG employee database was generated for the author. He worked with supervisors of these users and ensured that necessary corrections were made to reflect correct Cost Centre in the employee database.

* Red PC list:
A list of users having administrative rights on their machines without IT Management approval was provided to the user. He contacted the users on this issue and removed administrator access from their respective machines.

* Communication Notes:
The author jointly developed a new template of communication notes for internal employee communication. He also prepared communication notes for IT updates which was forwarded to all employees at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd.

* Deployment of IT Hardware:
The author deployed IT hardware to new and existing employees as and when required. During this process, he performed installation of IT hardware and assembly of a computer.

* Team Chart:
The author also prepared the team chart for portfolios under the Technical
Manager of Singapore at Daimler South East Asia Pte. Ltd., as and when new employee joined the team or departed from the team.

* Procurement for Office Automation team:
The Office Automation (OA) team required Netapp storage and a server rack for creating a testing environment for one of their projects. The author liaised with the OA team and the procurement department to help find a suitable vendor.

* Printer Reports:
The author prepared monthly reports for the accounting department for the HP and Lexmark printers used by the company.

* Invoices and Service Reports:
The author also verified and filed the invoices for delivery orders and periodic reports on electrical and cabling works, computer support system and access control system. He also consolidated the invoices, service reports and agreements from the past 3 years, thereby improving the filing system.

3. CONCLUSION

The author’s attachment with Daimler South East Pte. Ltd. was a wonderful professional learning opportunity where he obtained valuable on the job experience. Through the course of his attachment, the author learnt about the functioning of a multinational company and the ways in which different departments coordinate to achieve their targets and deliver some of the best automobiles in the world. Through his projects and association with people across various departments, he understood the significant role of the Information Technology department in supporting various business units. The primary and secondary projects provided a unique platform to build and develop the author’s skills. He gained new knowledge, encountered and overcame challenges and has come to appreciate on the job training. All of this was received in a hands-on environment, an unforgettable experience that was beyond the scope of the classroom.

The author interacted with employees from different nationalities and different cultures; the author has developed his social and professional communicational skills. The author handled projects independently and worked together as a team on various occasions. With tight deadlines and the constantly growing challenges, the author learnt the values of persistence and delivering results in high-pressure work environments. The nature of work in the IT infrastructure division has helped the author hone his IT skills by working on a regular basis with Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Publisher and office applications of Daimler AG like admin.NET, SDWI and BeePRM. Overall, the attachment provided a suitable platform for the author’s growth where he developed his strengths and improved on his weaknesses. Through the attachment, the author has gained valuable experience for the years to come.