Anvay Sane

Responsibilities

During my internship at Post Consumer Brands, I worked closely with the Quality Food Safety (QFS) team across a variety of projects and daily activities. I attended and often helped lead daily business unit meetings, QFS team huddles, and cross-departmental meetings such as risk assessments and change-control sessions. I contributed to several quality improvement projects, including monitoring sanitation conditions, cost and time saving efforts, preparing for internal audits, creating sanitation Gantt charts, and evaluating product specifications for additions like almonds and granola. A key part of my role was collecting and analyzing quality and safety data, creating resources for continuous improvement, and communicating findings to both plant and corporate leadership. Overall, my responsibilities required strong technical analysis, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment was leading the OmniMark elimination project. This initiative involved analyzing historical data from Certificates of Analysis and Redzone moisture checks to determine whether redundant moisture measurement equipment (OmniMark) was necessary on certain cereal lines. After manually compiling and analyzing over 1,000 data points, I confirmed consistency between measurements and demonstrated that product quality was not at risk without the OmniMark. I then collaborated with corporate R&D to validate the findings and presented the project at a change-control meeting, where it was approved. The project resulted in significant savings—each OmniMark costs $5,000, and maintenance consumes about 15 hours per month—making it a tangible and high-impact achievement.

Learning experience

The greatest lessons I learned came from working on cross-functional activities that required collaboration between QFS, Operations, Continuous Improvement, and other departments. I saw how each group brought different expertise to the table—operators with their practical knowledge of processes, CI with their focus on efficiency, and QFS with data-driven decision making. I learned the importance of tailoring communication styles depending on the audience, whether it was operators on the floor, my supervisor, or corporate leadership. These experiences taught me that successful quality and safety management depends not just on technical skills, but also on effective teamwork, professional communication, and respect for the perspectives of others.

What advice would you give?

My main piece of advice is to stay curious and approach every situation as an opportunity to learn. Throughout their experience at Iowa State in the Food Science Department, they are going to have challenging classes that require a lot of learning, as well as hands-on labs where they may have to work alone or in teams. Similarly, at internships, jobs, or research opportunities, they will encounter unfamiliar situations or problems that they don't know how to solve. In such cases, your approach is extremely important- you have a ton of resources, professors at ISU, and supervisors or coworkers at internships, and most of them want you to succeed and will provide you with the help you need, but only if your goal is to actually learn and not just get by. The more you stay curious, the more you'll be exposed to new knowledge and experiences. This is what is going to prepare you for success in the future.