Induction ends at lunch on Day 1 — this organisation study finds which onboarding stage is losing a quarter of new operators
Mapped to your syllabusAKTU MBA KMBN 2021-22 · KMBN308 Summer Training Project Report (6–8 weeks) · Semester 3Onboarding Effectiveness for Shop-Floor New Joiners is an eight-week Summer Training Project written up for AKTU's KMBN308 report. The placement is at Hindon Pressparts Pvt. Ltd. (a fictional firm, stated as fictional in the report), a mid-size maker of sheet-metal pressings, welded sub-assemblies and machined parts for two- and three-wheeler OEMs, with one plant in the Ecotech-III industrial area of Greater Noida and about 610 people on the floor across two shifts.
The report has two halves, as AKTU expects:
Analysis is deliberately simple and defensible: percentages, mean scores, cross-tabulation and one chi-square test in MS Excel. The output is a set of onboarding changes the HR team can actually run on a press-shop budget.
Syllabus alignment
Hindon Pressparts recruits about 150 shop-floor joiners a year: contract operators through two licensed contractors, ITI-qualified trainees on its own rolls, and apprentices engaged under the national apprenticeship scheme. Over the last twelve months, 41 of 148 joiners (27.7%) left within 90 days. Most of them left the press shop and weld shop, where takt pressure, heat and night shifts are highest.
The plant's onboarding ends, in practice, at lunch on the first day. After a compliance-heavy induction the joiner is handed to a line supervisor who is measured on output, not on how settled the new operator is. HR therefore cannot say which part of onboarding is failing: whether joiners do not understand their role and wage terms, do not get a buddy, do not feel accepted by the line, or simply find a job closer to home. Exit reasons in the register are too vague to act on.
There is a need for a structured, stage-wise look at onboarding as joiners themselves experience it, read alongside the exit data and the supervisors' view, so that HR can target its limited time and budget at the one or two changes most likely to reduce early exits.
This Summer Training Project studies a fictional Greater Noida auto-component plant, Hindon Pressparts Pvt. Ltd., in two parts. The first part is an organisation study: profile, departments, HR processes and a SWOT and McKinsey 7S analysis. The second is a small HR study of how shop-floor new joiners are onboarded and why so many leave in their first 90 days. Using Bauer's four-C framework, a bilingual questionnaire (n = 72), twelve months of joining and separation records (148 joiners) and six supervisor interviews, the study finds where the onboarding chain is weakest and recommends low-cost fixes.
India's auto-component industry runs on a large, young and mobile shop-floor workforce. In plants around Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad, operators and ITI trainees move between factories for a few hundred rupees a month, a shorter commute or a better shift. For a mid-size supplier that has to hold OEM delivery schedules and IATF 16949 quality requirements, every operator who leaves in the first three months is a lost training investment and a quality risk on the line.
At the host plant, HR runs a half-day induction on the first morning: documents, EPF and ESI forms, safety shoes, a video on the plant's quality policy and a walk to the shop. After that, the joiner belongs to the line supervisor. Of the 148 people who joined in the twelve months before the internship, 41 (27.7%) left within 90 days.
Measure each onboarding stage (pre-joining, Day 1, first 30 days, 30–90 days) against Bauer's four Cs. Compare scores across joiner categories. Read the exit register for patterns, and combine all three sources into a short action plan for the HR team.
The HR head agreed to give access to anonymised registers and to schedule survey sessions at shift change. The questionnaire takes about twelve minutes, Excel is enough for the analysis, and the whole study fits inside weeks 2–7 of an eight-week placement without pulling the trainee out of the department rotation.
In scope
Out of scope
Research design: descriptive single-case study inside an eight-week placement, combining a cross-sectional survey, secondary analysis of HR registers and short qualitative interviews.
Population and sample: all 148 shop-floor joiners of the previous twelve months. The 107 still employed were invited to fill the questionnaire at shift change, and 72 did (67% response). The 41 early leavers are studied only through the separation register. Six line supervisors (press shop, weld shop and machining, two each) were interviewed.
Instrument: a 26-item bilingual (Hindi and English) questionnaire. Section A covers the profile, Sections B–F rate onboarding statements on a 5-point agreement scale grouped by the four Cs, and Section G holds two open questions. Items were read aloud for respondents who preferred it, and a pilot with eight trainees in week 3 led to four items being reworded.
Analysis plan: frequencies and percentages for the profile; mean and standard deviation for each C; cross-tabulation of the Connection score band (low/high) by joiner category; a chi-square test of independence (Excel CHISQ.TEST); and 90-day exit rate = leavers within 90 days ÷ joiners in the period, by category and department.
| Phase | Weeks | Activity | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orientation | 1 | Induction, HR policy manual, plant walk | Org-profile notes |
| Design | 2 | Literature, framework, questionnaire draft | Approved questionnaire |
| Pilot and rotation | 3–4 | Pilot (n = 8); production, quality, stores | Final tool; dept notes |
| Fieldwork | 4–6 | Survey at shift change; registers; interviews | Raw data in Excel |
| Analysis | 7 | Tables, chi-square, themes | Findings draft |
| Close-out | 8 | Presentation to HR head; report draft | Feedback and report |
Ethics: written permission from the HR manager, verbal consent from each respondent, no names or codes on any sheet, and the firm's name disguised in the bound report wherever the institute requires it.
The placement was organised as a department rotation with a study running alongside it. HR & Admin was the home department: the trainee sat with the HR team every morning and rotated through the other functions in the afternoons and on specific days. The onboarding study began in week 2, once the trainee understood the joining process well enough to write sensible questions.
flowchart TD
A["Week 1: induction and HR policy manual"] --> B["Week 2: HR deep dive - hiring, payroll inputs, EPF and ESI"]
B --> C["Weeks 3-4: Production, Quality, Maintenance, Stores"]
C --> D["Week 5: Finance and Accounts, Marketing and OEM accounts"]
D --> E["Week 6: back in HR - compliance, grievance, separation"]
B --> S1["Mini-study: framework and questionnaire draft"]
S1 --> S2["Week 3: pilot with 8 trainees"]
S2 --> S3["Weeks 4-6: survey n=72, registers, 6 interviews"]
S3 --> S4["Week 7: Excel analysis and findings"]
E --> F["Week 7: SWOT and 7S workshop notes"]
S4 --> G["Week 8: presentation to HR head"]
F --> G
G --> H["Report: org study + HR study + learning"]Why this structure works for KMBN308. The external examiner reads the report for two things: does the student understand the whole organisation, and did they do a piece of HR work of their own? Rotating through five functions gives the first. Running the onboarding study as a parallel track gives the second without making the department chapters look like an afterthought.
Reporting lines. The trainee reported to the HR & Admin manager (the industry guide), met the faculty guide online every fortnight, and kept a weekly learning log that the HR manager reviewed on Fridays.
Where the mini-study sits in the report. Chapters 5–7 hold the study: design, analysis and findings. It is linked back to the organisation study through the 7S analysis, because the weak "Staff" and "Shared values" readings in Chapter 4 are exactly what the onboarding data later explains.
What you actually hand in, in the shape your department marks it.
01 · Organisation profile · 3,500–4,500 words (about 16 double-spaced pages)
Chapter 2 of the report and the base for every later chapter. The external examiner usually opens the viva here ("tell us about your company"), so the profile has to be specific to your host: real products, customers, structure and workforce mix, not lines copied from the company website. Within the 50 internal marks, guides typically weigh this as part of the organisation-study component.
| Specific, verified facts about the host (not website copy) | 4 |
|---|---|
| Clear organisation chart and workforce profile | 3 |
| HR policy and statutory framework covered | 2 |
| Sources noted and sensitive data handled properly | 1 |
02 · Framework analysis (7S, Porter, SWOT, ratios) · 2,200–2,800 words (about 10 pages)
Chapter 4 turns eight weeks of observation into analysis. Examiners use it to check whether you understood the organisation or only described it, and they routinely ask "which of the seven Ss is weakest, and how do you know?" Every point must rest on something you saw, read or were told during the training.
| Evidence attached to each SWOT point | 3 |
|---|---|
| 7S describes practice, not policy | 3 |
| Fit/misfit judgement argued clearly | 2 |
| Link from framework to HR study | 2 |
03 · Department-wise chapters · 6,000–7,000 words (about 26 pages)
Chapter 3 proves you actually rotated through the organisation. AKTU examiners often pick one department and ask what you saw there, so each section must contain concrete processes, records and one observation of your own. An HR student writes the HR section in most depth but still covers production, finance and marketing properly.
| Coverage of HR, production, finance and marketing | 4 |
|---|---|
| Concrete processes, records and flowcharts | 3 |
| Own observations in each department | 3 |
04 · Daily log guide (sample entries) · 250–400 words per week; 8 weeks
A record you keep for yourself and your guides from the first week. It is the raw material for Chapters 3 and 7 and your best preparation for "what exactly did you do?" in the viva. It is never a document to copy: the format below is blank, and the entries in the exemplar are labelled samples for a fictional trainee.
05 · Questionnaire · 4–5 pages as an annexure; 600–800 words of explanation in Chapter 5
The instrument for the HR study in Chapters 5 and 6, printed in full as an annexure. Examiners check that every objective maps to a section of the questionnaire, that the scale is explained, and that it was piloted. A short, clearly-worded tool in the joiners' own language beats a long one copied from a journal.
| Every objective mapped to questionnaire sections | 3 |
|---|---|
| Clear, single-idea items in the respondents' language | 3 |
| Pilot done and changes recorded | 2 |
| Coding plan fixed before fieldwork | 2 |
06 · Report chapter scheme · ≥100 pages, 12 pt, double-spaced (about 24,000–27,000 words)
AKTU requires a Summer Training Project Report of at least 100 pages, 12 pt and double-spaced. This scheme spreads those pages so that neither the organisation study nor the HR study is thin. It also shows guides how the 50 internal marks are usually split; AKTU fixes only the 50 + 100 total, so the breakdown below is indicative.
| Organisation and department study | 15 |
|---|---|
| HR study: design, analysis and findings | 15 |
| Suggestions and learning outcomes | 8 |
| Format, length (≥100 pages) and referencing | 7 |
| Regularity and contact with the guide | 5 |
Component 01
History from a single Sahibabad press shop to the Greater Noida plant, products, OEM customers, certifications, turnover band, organisation chart, workforce mix and the HR policy framework, written from the policy manual, website-style brochure and conversations with the HR team.
Component 02
One section each for HR & Admin, Production and Quality, Stores and Purchase, Finance & Accounts, and Marketing: what the department does, how work flows, which records it keeps, how it interacts with HR, and one observation or problem the trainee noticed there.
Component 03
A SWOT built from evidence collected in the rotation, and a McKinsey 7S reading of the plant that identifies misfits between the hard Ss (strategy, structure, systems) and the soft Ss (shared values, style, staff, skills).
Component 04
Bauer's four-C framework, the bilingual questionnaire, register analysis of 90-day exits and supervisor interviews, analysed in Excel with frequencies, means, cross-tabs and a chi-square test, ending in a 30-60-90-day plan.
Component 05
A weekly log kept in the blank format provided, turned at the end into a learning chapter that links what the trainee saw to HRM, Organisational Behaviour and labour-law concepts from the first year of the MBA.
Slide 1
Onboarding Effectiveness for Shop-Floor Joiners
Slide 2
Why this company
Slide 3
Company at a glance
Slide 4
Organisation structure and my position
Slide 5
Placement plan: eight weeks
Slide 6
What I learned in each department
Slide 7
SWOT and McKinsey 7S
Slide 8
The HR study: problem and objectives
Slide 9
Framework and method
Slide 10
Key findings
Slide 11
Recommendations
Slide 12
Limitations and future scope
Slide 13
My learning outcomes
Bullets, speaker notes and the .pptx · ₹499
Read each answer, close it, and say it in your own words. Your viva will ask. Now you'll know.
I wanted an HR internship in manufacturing rather than IT, because shop-floor HR deals with contract labour, statutory compliance and high-volume hiring, which classroom cases rarely cover. The plant hires about 150 operators a year and agreed to give me access to its HR registers, so it also allowed a real study.
It is a mid-size auto-component supplier in Greater Noida making sheet-metal pressings, welded sub-assemblies and machined parts for two- and three-wheeler OEMs. It is IATF 16949 certified, runs two full shifts with a partial night shift, and has about 610 people, nearly half of them contract workers.
The plant head has five functional heads under him: production, quality, maintenance and stores, finance, and HR & Admin, with marketing reporting to the corporate office. HR & Admin has a manager, two executives and a time office. I reported to the HR & Admin manager, who was my industry guide.
+15 more questions, with answers
Unlocks with the project · ₹499
Unlock for ₹499What to change before it goes anywhere near a submission. Skipping it is how the demo fails live.
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Unlock for ₹499How to study it, adapt it and walk your examiner through it, step by step.
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Unlock for ₹499OnlyProjects. (2026). Onboarding Effectiveness for Shop-Floor Joiners at a Greater Noida Auto-Component Plant (Summer Training Report): MBA Human Resources project bundle [Educational resource]. https://onlyprojects.online/projects/mba-hr-onboarding-effectiveness-shop-floor-joiners-auto-component-plant-greater-noida
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