After earning a B.E. in mechanical engineering from State Technological University of Madhya Pradesh in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, Jinendra Shrimal went on to earn his master’s in industrial engineering and management from the National Institute of Technology Calicut in Kozhikode, Kerala, India.
“I specialized in business analytics in India,” he said. “However, my passion lies in programming, data analysis, and problem solving, ultimately leading me to Georgia State.”
Shrimal selected the Robinson College of Business because of its esteemed reputation and comprehensive data science program. He will graduate with an M.S.A. in data science and analytics in December.
He had some programming experience prior to enrolling in the program but hadn’t done much coding. The Insight Sprints he has completed in collaboration with partner firms enabled him to get comfortable with companies’ data, and ultimately leverage it to solve their problems.
Shrimal was excited to be paired with East West Manufacturing, since a global engineering and manufacturing services company aligns with his background. Alongside two faculty members and four fellow students, Shrimal built a model to more accurately calculate the overhead costs associated with each of the company’s products.
“The existing model was treating material costs separately from overhead costs. Products requiring more production time should incur higher overhead costs,” he said. “Through analysis of manufacturing data, including an understanding of product complexity and assembly time, we proposed a method to calculate overhead based on the number of parts required for each product.”
After the East West Manufacturing project, which lasted 2.5 months, Shrimal got to work on another Insight Sprint involving the analysis of nursing data within the California hospital system. Shrimal and his peers tracked nurses’ job satisfaction levels, assessed their work-life balance, and identified areas where increased technical expertise might help them perform their jobs more effectively.
For a third Insight Sprint, Shrimal and his classmates helped a beverage distribution company with four warehouses identify slow-moving items and optimize its distribution process.
“Our analysis pinpointed geographical consumption patterns and allowed the company to refine its marketing strategies, especially within areas with lower consumption rates," he said.
After just two semesters at Robinson, Shrimal secured an internship with Micron Technology, a semiconductor manufacturing company located in Boise, Idaho. He is working as a procurement data scientist.
“I’ve learned a lot in this program,” he says. “When something is not working, I can return to the starting point, think again, and address a problem I didn’t think I could solve.”