Making an Impact by Integrating AI Automation on Co-op
As the second co-op at Karl Storz Endovision, Inc. in Northeastern’s entire history, Rohan Ghorpade, MS’24, industrial engineering, made sure to make quite the impact. By introducing AI to the company, he revolutionized their supply chain’s automation on a global level.
Rohan Ghorpade, MS’24, industrial engineering, has fully devoted himself to his focus in supply chain management during his time as a graduate student. He recently completed a co-op at Karl Storz Endovision, Inc., a rapidly growing medical device company in Charlton, Mass. The position started as a summer internship but was extended to a full-length co-op. Ghorpade was also a member of Lean Endeavors at Northeastern University and the Northeastern University Supply Chain Management Club.
Ghorpade’s role as a purchasing intern in the supply chain team at Karl Storz was to buy the materials needed for the company to manufacture endoscopes. Notably, he was only the second co-op at Karl Storz in Northeastern’s history. While several of his colleagues were doing the same type of work day-to-day, Ghorpade made the role his own by introducing AI to the company. This made it possible to automate the supply chain department’s process line. His application of AI would go on to have a major impact on the company. During his last week on co-op, his manager, Paola Paniagua, gave him some incredible news.
“The automation that I was working [on] in Charlton will be now used globally at Karl Storz,” Ghorpade says. “They’ll be having a demo of my automation this month.”
Even without this breakthrough, Ghorpade made his mark on Karl Storz by staying involved with as many teams as possible.
Ghorpade on co-op at Karl Storz.
“I worked with the supply chain team, I worked with the quality team, I worked with the manufacturing team,” he says. “I even worked with the finance team.”
After getting his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Ghorpade worked in India for about 18 months. Working at Karl Storz taught him some valuable life lessons, however. In particular, he recalled a time when his team was short on endoscope boxes and his manager left to pick more up from the supplier for the manufacturing plant.
“What this taught me [was] no matter what tasks you get in day-to-day life, you need to be flexible,” Ghorpade says.
He applied this knowledge of flexibility when implementing his AI-based automation. Although writing code was not his preferred kind of work, his willingness to be flexible allowed him to achieve something that significantly improved the company’s methods. The sense of accomplishment that it left, he says, made writing this code worthwhile.
“I never thought that I would be the one writing code and doing automation,” Ghorpade says.
There is still work to be done with Ghorpade’s automation, but he is excited to see its impact on Karl Storz.