Intro

A lot goes into getting food to our plates, and with technology advancing rapidly, the future of sustainable farming and animal nutrition lies in big tech. At Trouw Nutrition, I gained valuable insight into how impactful technology can be in shaping the future of feed production and distribution.

What is Trouw Nutrition?

Trouw Nutrition is a company that is a part of Nutreco. Trouw Nutrition a leader in animal nutrition and plans on using technology to feed the growing population in a sustainable manner. There are several locations across Canada and internationally, in Ontario the two locations are in St Marys and Puslinch.

At Trouw Nutrition, everyone plays an important role in ensuring customers produce as much feed as possible for Feeding the Future. There are many roles in technology that play a huge part in that vision as well.

Trouw Nutrition offers a wide range of services/products with animal feed being at the core of most of them.

Job Description

As a Project Coordinator intern, I began my role by learning Amino, a predictive ordering software designed to replace Excel sheets in customizing and delivering animal feed. Initially, it was challenging to grasp Amino's complexity, especially with no prior knowledge of broiler chickens and feed delivery. However, after familiarizing myself with the application and its API-driven communication for deliveries and orders, I was able to thoroughly test its functionality, using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) to summarize order data points.

Throughout my work with Amino, I developed a comprehensive list of test cases to assess its various functionalities. When I encountered bugs or issues, I presented them to the team and provided detailed explanations. As I gained more experience, I began training the regional team in Ontario, facilitating a smooth transition from Excel to Amino. This involved teaching a team with diverse technical abilities how to navigate and use the application effectively. During the training sessions, we conducted User Acceptance Testing, gathering UI concerns, feedback, and input useful for change management specialists.

A significant portion of my work involved creating detailed documentation for troubleshooting and using Amino's features. These documents were then incorporated into a Copilot AI Bot to assist users with their questions about Amino. Testing the AI Bot's responses to prompts offered a valuable learning experience, especially in understanding how different writing formats influence the bot's ability to answer general "how-to" questions and its challenges with more vague, open-ended inquiries. My goal for the Amino Bot is to add more in-depth explanations about what Amino is, why it is important, and how to best approach it, including alternative terminology based on regional variations.

Nearing the end of my 8-month internship, I wanted to focus on being more of a leader in the project, as it had been a goal of mine from the first half. Hence, when the Project Manager had to be away, I practiced my leadership skills by presenting bugs and feature requests to our vendors, which partially involved relaying feedback from end users to them. In doing so, I became more aware of important deadlines such as going live with certain provinces.

This AI bot responds to a wide range of prompts by referencing source documentation, enabling it to effectively address user questions.

Above is a detailed Excel program used to manually keep track of varying factors of delivering feed to birds.

My Goals at Trouw Nutrition

I had set a list of goals both technical and non-technical as I began my internship, to ensure that I can learn as much as possible for the duration of my time at Trouw Nutrition. The following goals include seperate goals from both the first and last 4 months of my internship.

My goals included the following,

WT1: Goals & Reflection Flowchart

The folder icon contains a more detailed and older version of the following two work term goals. (Mobile users cannot see WT1 and WT2 goals as designed on smaller screen sizes. Please select folder icon.)

Where rectangle = goal, circle = plan of action, sqaure = reflection

Understand how to effectively use Amino

1. Took notes during meetings

2. Asked meaningful questions

3. Identified bugs/issues

My understanding of Amino has deepened as I continue working with it and M3. I’ve added numerous test cases, covering scenarios from API functionality to basic user setup, and promptly address any issues with my team. We haven’t progressed much in User Acceptance Testing yet, so I plan to focus more on that area moving forward.

Provide training for Amino

1. Teaching myself by pretending to teach a class

2. Connecting with professionals to learn current practices

Communicating Amino's complexities has become easier with experience. When training new users, I emphasize the transition from detailed Excel spreadsheets to a user-friendly application like Amino. This has been my primary focus, as I’ve conducted regular training sessions over the past few weeks.

Meeting project and personal deadlines

1. Checking my calendar regularly

2. Checking my emails regularly

3. Planning accordingly to set myself up for success

The goal is to Go Live by year-end, with training continuing throughout the fall. I set personal deadlines for each training session to stay on track, regularly updating my plan. This goal remains in progress as I focus on delivering effective training.

Reflect on different business practices and nuances between provinces

1. Observing different trends and practices between regions

2. Observing similarities to help simplify processes

We’ve identified key differences among provinces, such as Ontario’s need for veterinarian scripts in Amino, which aren’t required in Manitoba. I aim to deepen my understanding of these differences by providing training across various regions, including Alberta and British Columbia.

Understand business processes in manufacturing

1. Comparing the way feed is currently being delivered to flocks without Amino to when Amino will be used to do this work

2. Understanding the benefits of simplifying the process through technology

Collaborating with customer service has improved my understanding of their process for tracking deliveries and data. I now better connect their Excel-based workflow to Amino and plan to expand this knowledge across provinces to enhance my training sessions.

WT2: Goals & Reflections

Goal 1: Test the predictive ordering software projections/predictions against live data to ensure numbers lined up.
Plan of Action 1: Line up data from the live Flocks in Excel (the current method of delivering feed) to what Amino is predicting.
Reflection 1: The testing was more focused on functionality of basic processes Customer Service teams would need to complete their daily tasks rather than lining real data with predictions, hence this goal did not align with testing we ended up focusing on.
Goal 2: Become a leader within my role in this project.
Plan of Action 2: Schedule and plan trainings, with each one having a clear objective. As well as using weekly meeting times to address concerns/things that are working well with regards to the functionality of the application as well as trainings.
Reflection 2: I gained experience as a leader within the project while the Project Manager was away. I organized and led calls to discuss bugs and feature requests for Amino with our vendors and team. It was a great opportunity to step outside my comfort zone, and the Amino team and I were still able to progress with our deadlines for the project while the Project Manager was away.
Goal 3: Be the first to fully test the newest version of Amino, ensuring a majority of the bugs we had reported have been fixed. This goal is one of my more important goals as it ensures the progress of this project.
Plan of Action 3: Dedicated a majority of my hours to this goal, to ensure it is done in a timely manner, and compare my testing with colleagues to ensure we have consistent results.
Reflection 3: We had quite a bit of dedicated time to finding bugs and pushing for them to be resolved by our vendors. This time happened to be while the project manager was away, hence I would provide daily updates to both my manager and product manager to show progress/lack of progress through identifying bugs and getting them resolved, then retesting the most recent code changes. In the end the Amino team was able to mark many of our previous bugs as resolved as well as zero critical issues that would prevent regions from going live with the software.
Goal 4: Improving my oral communication.
Plan of Action 4: Always aimed to be clear when training new users, avoiding super technical terminology. And asking for feedback during trainings and apply it ASAP to ensure users that are being trained can make the most of their trainings.
Reflection 4: I feel more comfortable expressing ideas verbally. However, I believe I can always continue improving on this goal in my remaining work terms as a personal goal.
Goal 5: Understand and hopefully go through the process from transitioning regions from the TEST environment to Live.
Plan of Action 5: Learn new technology quickly and be able to train others on that. As well as being more mindful and aware of all the components that will allow regions to Go Live.
Reflection 5: This goal was successful in terms of deciding to Go Live with one region. The rest of the regions will continue to Go Live in 2025. Due to that I was not able to be a part of the implementation of moving users from a testing environment to production, however, I am aware of how it works as that has been discussed and decided.

Conclusion

It’s very important to be aware of what goes on behind the scenes of getting food to consumers. It takes a lot of people across many professions to ensure quality food is sold. Using technology to optimize and enhance that process is the future of animal nutrition.

As a Project Coordinator, my biggest takeaway from my internship was seeing how things do not always go as planned, and the Amino team and I had to be agile in how we recovered from unmet goals to continue progress on a project many were passionate about!

Acknowledgments

Lastly, I wanted to acknowledge my Manager Blanca Villegas and the Preditive Ordering Project Manager Brad McIntyre for their continous support throughout both my work terms!

Category	Details
Programming Languages	C, Java, Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and Assembly
DevelopmentTools	Git, Linux, Maven, and Docker
Transferable Skills	Problem Solving, Detail-Oriented, Written/Verbal Communication, Collaboration, and Leadership

Skills and Experiences

Project Coordinator