Students from MNO4314 Consulting to Management module had the opportunity to work with consulting giants McKinsey to identify and recommend industry verticals to be “future-ready”.
Guided by their lecturer Dr Andreas Rasharo, the students were tasked to identify industry verticals in Singapore that has not been earmarked by the Ministry of Trade and Industry for its Industry Transformation Maps initiative and make their recommendations.
To enhance the students’ learning experience, the teams would then present their proposals to a panel of McKinsey experts for grading.
Team Qi Consulting. From left: Seah Zong You, Goh Zhuang Li, Hazel Tan, Suzanne Ngo, Jocelyn Bay, Lim Hui Yee (Team Leader)
One of the student teams, Qi Consulting, pinpointed a group of workers – the porters in the healthcare industry that are most likely to be in danger of being replaced by robots and drones within the next three years.
The main function of porters are to move patients and courier items within the hospitals, but the students pointed out that there are already hospitals that have started to introduce machines to streamline these roles.
To upskill the porters, the students recommended that they can be trained to assist the nurses in daily activities to free up the nurses’ time for patient care.
“We proposed for porters to take on new job responsibilities relating to the assistance of daily living of patients, such as feeding, washing, and grooming of patients,” said Lim Hui Yee (BBA Year 4 Hons), the team leader of Qi Consulting.
“After going through training and upskilling in nursing knowledge, porters could even potentially be involved in other responsibilities like taking patient samples, temperatures, pulses, and blood pressure,” she added.
Instead of having workers go through the huge change of working in an unfamiliar industry, Dr Rasharo praised Qi Consulting for coming up with an innovative solution that prepares the workers for new jobs but having them stay within their industry.
Please visit bba.nus.edu.sg for more information on NUS Business School undergraduate programme.
