My name is Kseniia Cherniuk, and I am the second-year student of logistics at SAMK, Rauma.
I did my internship at the Maritime Logistics Research Center at SAMK. I must say that it was a very interesting and useful experience, so I want to share it with you.
First of all, my task was to conduct a research on the topic “Maritime logistics business environment comparison of Finland and Ukraine through Porter’s diamond model”. I really enjoyed working on this topic because I was interested in it from the very first day. During the work I learned a lot about my topic, exactly about: similarities and differences of maritime logistics business environment between Finland and Ukraine, Porter‘s diamond model as an instrument for detailed evaluation and explanation of an industry and its competitiveness. With help of this experience, I also learned how to structure and write the research paper, because I have never done that before in my life, and I believe this will be an additional useful skill for future work.
As a results of my research, I got a comprehensive overview for the two countries.
Finland in general, is more resilient and stable in the field of maritime logistics. Although it was affected by the beginning of the Russian Ukrainian war and forced to look for new ways for maritime transportation, still its supporting industries and competitiveness are strong enough, which helped Finland to hold on.
Turning challenges into learning
Ukraine, in turn, has suffered very large losses and destruction in this field due to occupation, missile strikes, and the loss of maritime transport units. Despite this, the supporting industries in this country, especially rails and roads, are trying to compensate for the loss by increasing transportation volumes, changing routes, and expanding connections.
While I was working on the research, I had times of inspiration and difficulty. It was challenging for me to start the research, because I had no experience, and also it was hard to find really useful and current information sometimes. But important to say that during the internship I received sufficient help and supervision from the supervisors. My supervisors were available to reach out to if I had any questions. I could write to them and get answers relatively quickly. So, my difficulties were resolved very quickly thankfully to that.
Summarizing my word, I want to say that I am very grateful for the opportunity to work on the research. I also recommend it to everyone, if you ever have such an opportunity, do not doubt that it will be a valuable and enjoyable experience. I also hope that this research can be useful for others in the future.
Text: Kseniia Cherniuk, student of logistics at SAMK, Rauma
Photo: Kseniia Cherniuk