STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us." This is one of my favorite precepts and at this point of time when my future stands in front of me like a dream, this adage has now influenced me more than ever before. The key to develop innovative concepts in any field is to look beyond the apparent and never take things for granted. I am reminded of RW Emerson's proverbial lines, "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave trail."
It was April 2008; I was on the threshold of making an extremely important decision in my life, choosing my branch of specialization after having decided to pursue engineering. I had always been fascinated and good at in physics, mechanics and mathematics since my school days where I scored 95.6 % of marks in CLASS 10 and 95.2 % of marks in CLASS 12 in ALL INDIA CBSE, consistently ranked among the TOP THREE students of my school. After sufficient introspection, I realized Mechanical Engineering was something I was actually looking for. My consistency continued in engineering also, as I was always the CLASS TOPPER among 64 students in all the semesters and was ranked DEPARTMENT THIRD with a CGPA of 8.91. After getting exposed to modules related to Process planning and Cost estimation, Total Quality Management and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, I realized what Industrial Engineering can do to enhance productivity and also assist as a vital tool in the process of manufacturing and management. It is with this introspection that I have made another important decision in my life; pursuing my masters in Industrial Engineering field in the United States of America.
I am VIJAYENDRAN CHANDRAMOULI, currently in the final year of B.E in Mechanical Engineering in Easwari Engineering College, one of the most leading colleges for engineering in the country, affiliated to Anna University, Chennai. The college, one of the top engineering colleges in the state is known for its excellent faculty and placement record, besides having a good R&D Department.
The very fact that my mind was always inquisitive to learn new things to appreciate science and that research was something which was inseparable from my mind, motivated me to explore the research side of Mechanical Engineering field and its related domains.
My research inclinations have led me to present a paper titled Trends in Supply Chain Management in a National Level event held at Anna University and Impact of Product Life Cycle on Manufacturing Systems Re-Configuration and Simulation System for process Capacity of RMS at various National Level Symposiums. I presented another research paper on Re-Configurable Manufacturing System (RMS) at the Indian Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIIE) conference and won the FIRST PRIZE at the state level. I was selected as ONE among SIX students to represent my State Chapter of IIIE at the National Level at Mumbai in the month of September 2011. I also under took a project on Design and Fabrication of Two Wheeler Fuel Economy Testing Device with an aim to compute the fuel economy of a two wheeler by consuming 50 ml of fuel and display the results using an interface. I chose C++ programming interface to do all the computing works and displayed the results. Perhaps the crowning achievement of my project was that I was able to show the fuel economy of the vehicle in just 5-10 minutes by conducting simple tests. My quest for innovation and my ability to come up with solutions to existing problems using optimal techniques landed me my first publication in the proceedings of a National Conference on Advancements and Recent Trends in Mechanical Engineering- ARIME 2011.
I have also presented seminars at the college level related to Lean Management, ERP, Supply Chain Management, and Operations Research. I was appointed as the Student Chairperson of the SAE INDIA Collegiate Club of my college as a reward to my contributions. This position of responsibility exposed me to even greater scale of activities of the SAE International, including the flagship competition BAJA-SAE. Man management and leadership skills are essential in the highly competitive world today, my leadership skills are evident from the fact that I was the TEAM CAPTAIN of GREENMEX- my college team for designing and developing an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) for BAJA-SAE Competition conducted by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE INDIA), a division of SAE INTERNATIONAL U.S.A. In spite of all these academic activities, I presented seminars related to Lean Management, ERP, Supply Chain Management, and Operations Research and also actively participated in co-curricular activities. I am a student member of Entrepreneurship cell (E-Cell) in collaboration with National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and I have attended many workshops and conferences related to that. I have also been a member of Scout Cadet at the school level and attended various blood donation camps, Tree Planting campaign and also contributed towards Social Welfare activities.
I also got an opportunity to work in a discrete manufacturing industry as an intern at Lucas-TVS Pvt. ltd. I worked in close accordance with the company's line engineers and even presented my perspectives on implementing the minimum cost effective and dwell time supply chain for the raw materials needed for the manufacturing of alternators. The ideas from my training were used to carry out further research at the company. This gave me a good insight to understand discrete manufacturing operations and I gained valuable experience working with several engineers at the plant.
My undergraduate course so far has given me a sense of the wide scope Industrial Engineering has for pursuing research. My chief research interests are in the field of Project Management, Operational Management, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology, Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Operational Research and Customer relationship management.
Considering the high quality of research being done at the Industrial Engineering department at Texas A&M University, I am deeply convinced that a graduate program at the Texas A&M University is the first step towards my career goal of developing frameworks for implementing Radio Frequency Identification Technology for enhanced productivity of the Supply Chain. I am confident that with my enthusiasm, willingness to learn new things and a never ending interest in the field, I will be able to contribute my small bit towards making this world a better place to live, in pursuit of achieving my career goal if given an admission. The research work on Closed-loop Supply Chains Planning and Network Design being done under your Logistics and Networked Systems Research Laboratory matches my area of interest and I would like to be a part of it and contribute to the existing work and provide new and original ideas if given an opportunity.
Hi vijay90
That looks like a great SOP! In my opinion, you should remove the capitalizations on TOP THREE, VIJAYENDRAN CHANDRAMOULI, etc. I have not seen that in any essay.
Also, looks like there's about 1100 words there. You may want to shorten it a bit.
Good luck!
