GUIDELINES FOR WRITING SUMMER PROJECT REPORT

Instructions:
Each student should prepare three identical project reports, one of which must be submitted to the
Institute on June 13th and 14th, 2011. The report without certificate of completion issued by the
company mentor will not be accepted under any circumstances. Page numbering should commence
from the table of contents.
REPORT FORMAT
The outcomes of research works are to be conveyed to end-users or recorded for future use. The
research efforts will be useful to the end-users only when they are documented in the form of reports.
So, a standardized format for the report will help researchers present their contributions and findings
more systematically.

The different items of a research report are presented below:

1. Cover page
2. Introductory pages
- Acknowledgement
- Certificate
- Abstract
- Table of contents
- List of tables
- List of figures

3. Text
- Chapters
- Main sections
- Subsections
- Footnotes
- Conclusions of each chapter
4. Bibliography
5. Appendices

Introductory Pages

Acknowledgements: In the process of carrying out any project, the students would have received
help from different persons and organizations. So, all those helps should be acknowledged under this
heading. In an academic research, a sample list of people who are to be acknowledged is as follows:
• Supervisor (Industry Mentor)
• Organizational head (Industry Head)
• Members of the department who rendered their valuable suggestions and criticism during the
research period
• The executives in different organizations who provided data and literature for the research
• Institute Mentor
• The typesetting office and personnel.

Abstract: Abstract gives an executive summary or overview of the project report outlining the title
of the project, objective(s), shortcomings of existing literatures, need for further research, proposed
measure of performance and research methods, results of comparison and highlights of inferences as
brief conclusions

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Table of contents: Table of contents is the catalogue of the project report, which summarizes every
aspect of the report.

List of tables and figures: In project reports, the data and results are presented in the form of tables
for quick grasp. Each and every table must be numbered. The numbering should be such that it is
internal to each chapter. For example, if the total number of tables in Chapter 4 is 20, then the
numbering should be from Table 4.1 to Table 4.20 and similarly for figures.

Text
Different items under 'Text' are Chapters, Main Sections, Subsections, and Conclusions.

Chapters: The text of the report should be divided into different chapters depending on the type of
project. In the case of survey based project report, the different chapters are as listed below:

1. Introduction
2. Introduction to the subject under study
3. Analysis of the organization under study
4. Literature Review
5. Objectives and Hypotheses
6. Research Methodology
7. Data Analysis
8. Conclusions
9. Suggestions and Recommendations

Introduction: The chapter on introduction should begin with the origin and the development of the
project concept along with the most significant contributions in the past must be summarized in this
chapter. At the end of this chapter, the plan of project in the form of a flowchart should be presented.
Further, this chapter should give a lead for literature search.

Introduction to Subject: The chapter focuses on brief outline about the topic/subject which includes
reasons for opting the particular subject, its benefits, importance and scope of the subject.

Introduction to Organization: It focuses on background, organization structure, company turnover,

product line, distribution network, market share and relevance of the subject to the organization
under study.

Literature review: Literature review is the crucial part of any research. This helps the researcher
avoid reinventing past contributions and results. This focuses on the past literature in the field of
research and its classification under different angles.

Objectives and hypothesis: Based on the direction of the literature review, the researcher should
clearly spell out the objectives of the research and related hypotheses. As mentioned earlier,
hypothesis is an assumption about the population where the truth of the assumption is not sure. The
researcher should list a meaningful number of hypotheses, which will be tested under the chapter
'Data Analysis’.

Methodology: Methodology aims to finalize the activities of research design and data collection
procedure.

After designing the questionnaire, the researcher should organize the data collection activity with
the help of interviewers as per the assumed sampling plan and experimental design. Anyone or a
combination of primary data collection methods, viz., observation method, personal interview, and
telephone interview and mail survey is to be used in the study.
Data analysis: The data analysis can be classified into preliminary analysis and hypotheses testing.
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This chapter deals with the application of statistical tools for the analysis of data and making
inferences.

In preliminary analysis, the data are presented in the form of charts and graphs to have insight into
the research problem. This helps the researcher come out with some inferences, but these are based
on the observations from the charts and graphs.

The second type of analysis is the testing of hypotheses. The different hypotheses which have been
formulated earlier are tested at this stage. This exercise will reveal certain underlying facts of the
research problem which will help the researcher formulate strategies for the operations of any
business system. This chapter will have a major subsection on results and discussions. In some
cases, this section deals with mathematical models and regression models, in addition to the above
items.
Conclusions: The chapter on conclusions summarizes project findings, contribution of the study,
limitations of the study, and scope for the future research.
Suggestions and Recommendations: The researcher has to give his/her views as suggestion or
recommendations to the organization based on the analysis of data collected.

Bibliography
A bibliography, the product of the practice of bibliography, is a systematic list of books and other
works such as journal articles. Bibliographies range from "works cited" lists at the end of books and
articles to complete, independent publications. As separate works, they may be in bound volumes
such as those shown on the right or computerized bibliographic databases. A library catalog, while
not referred to as a "bibliography," is bibliographic in nature. The references can be classified into
journals, books, magazines, newspapers, research studies, etc. These are illustrated below.
Journal articles: The articles which are taken from journals should be included in the bibliography
as per the following format.
Author(s), Title of the article, Name of the journal, Volume of the journal, Issue number of
the volume, Year of publication, from-to numbers of the pages of the article.
A few examples of journal publications are presented below. If the number of authors is more than
two, it is preferable to use et al. after the first author.
1. Panneerselvam, R. and C. Oudaya Sankar, 'New heuristics for assembly line balancing
problems', International Journal of Management and Systems, Vo!. 9, No. I, 1993, pp. 25-36,
2. Panneerselvam, R. et al., 'Models for warehouse location problem', International Journal of
Management and Systems, Vol. 6, 1990, pp. 1-8.
Government publications
Ministry of Law, Government of India, the Copyright Act,' 14 of 1957, Delhi, The Manager of
Publications, 1960, p. 10.
Books: If some of the items from a book are referred in a research, the format to include that book in
the research report is as given below:
Author(s), Title of the book, Name of the publisher, Place of publication, Year of
publication.
Some examples of such references are as shown below:
Gopal,akrishnan, P. and M. Sundaresan, Materials Management: An Integrated Approach,
Prentice-Hall of India, New Delhi, 1979.

TYPING INSTRUCTIONS
After thoroughly checking the draft of the research report, it should be given for final typing. This
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section deals with important instructions for typing the report. The different items which are to be
concentrated are paper, margins, indention, spacing between .lines and spacing within a sentence.
Paper: The quarto-size white thick unrolled paper is used for the final printing of the report. The
printing should be done on one side only.
Margins: The left margin and the right margin of the report should be 1.5 inch and 1 inch,
respectively. The top as well as bottom margin should be I inch. But, in the pages starting with a
chapter, the top margin should be 3 inch.
Indention: The paragraph can be classified into general and indented. The first line of general
paragraph is not indented, whereas in indented paragraph, the first line of the paragraph is indented
by 10 spaces from the left margin.
Spacing between lines the entire report should be typed with double spacing except indented
paragraphs, tables and footnotes. The indented paragraphs, tables and footnotes are to be typed with
single spacing. But there should be double spacing between each neighboring pair of these single
spaced items, that is, between adjacent indented paragraphs as well as adjacent tables.

Triple spacing should be given for the following cases:

• Before each paragraph heading
• Before and after each centre heading, centre subheading, side heading and indented paragraph.
Spacing within a sentence: The details of spacing within a sentence are summarized in Table 1.

Details of Spacing within a Sentence

Description of item Number

of spaces
Between words 1
After a semicolon 1
After a colon 1
After a comma 1
After a full stop 1
Before the first parenthesis or bracket 1
Between the fast letter of a word in a sentence and each of
0
comma, semicolon, colon, exclamation mark, question mark,
0
last parenthesis and last bracket.
0
Between the first quotation mark and the very next word.
0
Between the end quotation mark and the immediate preceding word.
0
Before and after a hyphen (-)
Before and after a slash (/)

The draft of the report should be reviewed for an appropriate number of times so that the errors are
completely avoided. While reviewing the draft, certain guidelines are to be followed, as indicated
below:

• The text should convey the intended message.

• The report should be organized in hierarchical form with chapters, main sections, subsections etc.
• There should be continuity between chapters and also between sections as well subsections.
• The abstract at the beginning should reveal the essence of the entire report which gives the
overview of the report.
• The content of the report should fully reveal the scope of the research in logical sequence without
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 omitting any item and at the same time it should be crisp and clear.
• A reading of abstract and conclusion of a report should give the clear picture of the report content
to the readers.
• Each and every table as well as figure should be numbered and it must be referred in the main
text.
• The report should have appropriate length. The number of Pages should be restricted to 50-75
pages.

Note: The Institute mentor has to be kept informed about the progress of the research work
and the final report has to be hard bound only after the draft has been approved.

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