LFM Infosession

I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to the LFM Infosession on Monday night. I felt that it was a great success! I know that I had a great time meeting everyone and it seemed that everyone I talked to had a good time and learned a lot about the program. If you can think of any way that we could have made your experience better, please let me know. Also, if you have any follow up questions that you need/want answered, please don't hesitate to e-mail me and I can do my best to answer them or get you in touch with those who can.


Other than the Infosession, the stress has already started again. The first week back to full classes and already I am feeling swamped with work. Can't believe how quickly that refreshed from a light week feeling goes away. I'm trying to get my stuff in order for a light weekend as some friends are coming in to town, but it looks as though it is going to be another long, work-filled weekend.

So just an update on classes, it seems that the first half of System Dynamics is the most popular part. We had our first class of the second half today and there were roughly as many visiting/listening students as there were students taking the second half and the total number of people in the room was under half! Wow. I'm still excited about the rest of the class though, even though it is a lot of work. For some reason, the current homework assignment isn't making all that much sense to me, but maybe that is because it is 1:10 am and I can't seem to think or sleep right now.

Well, I guess I should give it another go.
Good night and more later....

She said "Yes!"

I just wanted to share with everyone the fantastic news that Alicia and I are now engaged! Sat night/ Sunday morning I proposed to Alicia and she said "Yes!" We are both very excited about this development and most of our friends and family feel that it is way overdue (we've been together for 4 years as of the 10th of Oct!). It was fun (but taxing) calling everyone to let them know the good news. My mom and dad's response was great - my mom screamed in joy and my dad screamed "Goal!" as the Patriots had just scored again against the Dolphins. Oh well, we both know that they are excited. Alicia's step-mom had a funny one too. We just bought our friends old flat screen TV as they were upgrading to a larger model. Alicia's step-mom, when told about the engagement, asked how the TV looked on Alicia's finger. You may have to be there for that one, but we had a good time with that.
So, just wanted to pass on the news!
Take care and more later...

Finally, some pictures from the El Salvador trip (Part 1)

Pictures from the trip, starting from the top:
1) A giant mosaic in front of the Museum of Art
2) A photo of a stature inside the museum
3) A park in front of the Dell building
4) Our sponsor's HQ in El Salvador

Finally some pictures of the El Salvador Trip (Part 2)

Pictures from the top down:
1) Flying into San Salvador, a shot of the countryside.
2&3) Two artifacts from the anthropology museum.
4) The facade of the Metropolitan Cathedral that was designed by Fernando Llort.

Head of the Charles

Pictures from the Head of the Charles Regatta:
Pictures from top to bottom:
1) View of the BU Boathouse with Boston in the distance
2) The BU train bridge with an 8 racing away (notice all the dots in the water, these are all the teams waiting to race).
3) Upstream from the BU bridge, women's fours going on (again notice all the dots).
4) Alicia and fellow LFM, Dave, enjoying the day from the BU train bridge.

Great day in all, beautiful weather, interesting sport and what a unique event!

Rememberances...

36th Floor of the Bank of America Building -
Meeting old friends and saying my goodbyes
A sad and dreary day.

Whew!

What a long week it has been! So this past week has been mid-terms and it has been an awful lot of stress. Not just school related for me, unfortunately, but even so it has been a rough week for us LFM's. Projects, exams, etc, all due before SIP (Sloan Innovation Period) week. SIP is a mini-break for Sloanies. It is a week during which they take mini-classes to help relieve stress and break up the semester a little bit. Engineering classes still go on (bad news for LFM's) but it is pretty manageable for me as currently I am only taking one engineering class. So hopefully I will get a lot of those things accomplished that I have been meaning to, as well as spend some quality time with Alicia - who has been wonderful this semester with the amazingly hectic schedule we lead. We are planning on watching the Head of the Charles on Saturday and then possibly take a drive up to Mt. Monadnock for a little hiking. Should be a great trip and the weather is perfect for some hiking. Just to get away for a little while will be great.

Some good news is that my G-lab team finally has our company selected. The company is KORRES and here is a little bit about them from their site www.korres.com:

From homeopathic remedies to natural products
Korres Natural Products is a Greek company with roots in Athens’ first ever Homeopathic Pharmacy. Set up in 1996 with the aim to utilise its extensive scientific resources for the creation of beneficial and safe products, the company today offers a complete skin and hair care range, make-up, sun care products and herbal preparations. A team of experienced scientists worked closely to make this happen, sharing common goals and values.

We aren't sure of the full project scope yet, but I will keep you updated as I learn more.

That's all I have for you now. Have a great weekend and hope to see some of you at the LFM Infosession on Oct. 29th on the MIT campus. If you are going to be in the area and wish to join us, please go to http://lfm.mit.edu/?fileName=events/lfminfoevening_2007.html to learn more and to register for the event. The earlier the better as we still need to let the caterers know how much food to prepare!
See you there!

Dell – El Salvador: My longest blog to date.

So I just got back from my trip to San Salvador, El Salvador on an information seeking trip to help my Integrating the Lean Enterprise group a basic understanding of Dell’s Customer Service Call Center. We are working with Dell to help them understand and develop their lean culture at their El Salvador location so as to help create the model lean call center for all of Dell. What a great trip we had though…

Day 1 - We left early Sunday morning and arrived in San Salvador, via Miami, by noon local time. Flying into San Salvador, we flew along the Pacific coast where we saw the best surfing in Central America, the coast of El Salvador. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to even make it to the beach let alone go learn to surf…maybe next time! We were met at the airport by a driver who took us to our hotel – the Sheraton Presidente. As soon as we made it to the hotel, the rain and thunderstorms started. I really enjoy thunderstorms, so I was excited to experience one in El Salvador. After relaxing in the hotel for a little while, my teammate and I headed out on the town to go and see San Salvador. Our hotel was located next door to the museum of modern art so we decided to venture in but unfortunately it appeared closed due to construction. Instead, we decided to head on down to the Anthropological Museum. It too seemed closed, but eventually we figured out how to buy tickets and how to get into the exhibits, which were all in Spanish. It was very interesting to try and understand all the different semi-technical Spanish that isn’t taught in Spanish 1 or 2, but somehow we got by. After the museum, we decided to walk downtown and see the Metropolitan Cathedral – it took 50 years to build and the façade was designed by a famous El Salvadorean artist Fernando Llort (more on him later). After seeing the Cathedral we walked around downtown San Salvador and took in the sights and sounds of the street markets that flowed from the Plaza Barrios in front of the Cathedral. As the sun was setting and the vendors were packing up their belongings, we caught a cab and headed back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we discovered from the concierge how to get into the art museum and so we decided to head over and see everything. A small but great exhibit was on show and we had a good time seeing the museum. We were pretty exhausted after our day of travelling and sightseeing, so we decided to have dinner at the hotel and then called it a night.

Day 2 – Monday morning we had a breakfast meeting arranged with the Director of the El Salvador site and our local Dell contact. After discussing the scope of our project, we made our way to the Dell facility where we were quickly engrossed in interviews and learning about the call center space. Neither of us had ever worked with a call center before and I must say that it is VERY impressive: lots of people, data and information all travelling around at a fast pace to try and service customers in the best possible way. With all of my previous history, I was actively comparing the space to a manufacturing facility – there are many similarities, but at the same time there are many unique differences. After a full day of getting our feet wet, we headed back to the hotel tired and full of new information. After relaxing for a bit and checking in with Alicia, we headed out to a “typical” Salvadorean restaurant called Alo Heustra. Delicious food, but I don’t necessarily agree that it was typical due to the sheer fact that they had no pupusas on the menu. Just for those of you who don’t know, pupusas are the national food of El Salvador. There are pupuserias on the sidewalks and all over town and every El Salvadorean eats them at least twice a week (at least that is what our contact said). Also, over the course of these two days, I have now found my favorite beer, Bahia. It is made in San Salvador and is awesome. If anyone knows where I can find this beer in the States, please let me know. Just for the beer aficionados it is a beer similar to Corona, but oh so much better. On our return trip, my teammate laughed at me as we were eating – down to my last sip of beer, I said “Goodbye, my friend” and finished off my drink. I think I had the last laugh though as she almost had beer go through her nose because she was laughing so hard. Anyway, let’s get back to the rest of the trip.

Day 3 – Tuesday morning we were met and taken back to the Dell center. The day was packed with more interviews and when we had a minute we were able to sit down with some of the call center agents and the call center operations agents to see what they did. This was a great learning experience for me. By “side-jacking” with an agent, I was able to hear the whole call and problem resolution and let me just say that we, as Americans, need some work on how to be polite. I was embarrassed for me and for America as I stood there listening to these calls while a great employee, and I will say that every single person that I met on this trip was exceptionally kind and talented, took it all in stride and still helped the customer out – I know that I wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. Anyway, I just want to urge you all that the next time you make a call, treat everyone you talk to as you would like to be treated. Hopefully, if you all take these words of advice you will make many people (not just the employees I met) much happier. After another long day at Dell, our contact took us out to dinner at Arbol de Dios, one of the best pupuserias in town. We ran into another Dell employee with an American in tow so we all ate wonderful food together and had a great time hearing and sharing stories – definitely a night to remember! At this restaurant, there was a gallery exhibit of the same artist who designed the Cathedral. He had a couple of paintings for sale and I purchased two of them. I’d love to post them for you all to see as they have a great style and wonderful colors, but unfortunately I can’t. I can however suggest that you look up Fernando Llort on-line to see if he has any paintings on there. I can however share a photo of the façade of the Cathedral (see the photo above) so you can have some idea of his work (though the paintings are a very different style). After dinner, my teammate and I worked late into the night getting our interview questions as well as an on-line survey in order for our half-day on Wednesday. After a late night, we headed to bed.

Day 4 – Woke up early to pack and get everything in order for our return trip to the States. We made our way back to Dell and spent the morning in an interview with a Lean Change Agent (“I met Captain Kaizen”) who was a delight to talk to. He was very positively focused on his lean actions and was rolling out his own ideas to help influence the lean culture at Dell – I must say he was a great spokesperson for lean at the facility and hopefully he will be able to help us (and us help him) throughout our project. After our meeting, we made a trip to a local bakery to pick up some semitas (two layers of a pastry filled in with a jelly of your choice) and quesadillas (different from the Mexican quesadilla, but I haven’t had it yet so I don’t know how it differs) to bring home to share with our friends and family. We then headed back to the office for our last interview of the day and then took off to go to the airport.

Follow-up: What an amazing trip we had. It was my first experience with being a consultant and it was especially interesting in that I got to visit another country to do so. Though there are nicer places in El Salvador than the capital, I must say that everyone I met was amazingly kind, intelligent and full of energy – even in the call center where they are exposed to high stress and irritated customers, even there they had an amazing ability to have fun. Definitely a trip to remember and I hope to head back down to El Salvador to see the rest of the country and to see how our project results are implemented!

I’ll have photos up in the next couple of days, so please come back soon.

More later…

Quick Update

So it was my birthday this past weekend. Friday night (my actual b-day) was a great time hanging out with some LFM and Sloan friends. We all went out to a couple of bars and I had Happy Birthday sung to me in 8 languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Swedish, Latvian, Hebrew, and Czech. Wow! What an impressive array of languages. Definitely a treat to have everyone sing in their native languages. On Saturday, Alicia and I took a trip to Portland, ME to hang out with my brothers, sister-in-law and niece. My brothers all flew in from Portland, OR and New York City. A good time together and the first time that has happened since Christmas of 2005 so it was a nice reunion.

On other things, I am heading down to San Salvador, El Salvador on Saturday (or so) to spend the first part of next week working on my Integrating the Lean Enterprise with Dell, our client, who is looking for my group to implement lean in their call center so that their El Salvador facility becomes the model call center for all of Dell. Should be a fun and interesting, though stressful, trip. We have been awaiting some documents from Dell so that we can create a great experience for all next week, but as of yet we have not received any of these required documents. Should be a learning experience for us all!

On the class side of things, the amount of work is ridiculous. I guess part of the problem is taking System Dynamics, G-Lab and Lean at the same time in addition to the core. Very overwhelming. I highly suggest taking at least the first two, we'll see about the third. And a note to all potential LFM's: when you sign up for Fall classes at the end of Summer semester and there is a high interest in both G-lab and System Dynamics, sign up for G-lab. Bid all your points on G-lab. System Dynamics is a great class that you all should take, but with the drop out rate of the 2nd year Sloanies who are looking for less work, there will be plenty of seats available for you - I think that 30 - 40 people dropped the class after the third week!

So that is all I have for now. I'll have another update after my trip next week. Tune in again around the 12th or so. More later...