So Alicia and I just finished celebrating our first real weekend since last summer...or so it feels. With the craziness of the LFM program and Sloan, it didn't feel like we had much time to spend with each other, but we had great weather and a wonderful weekend.
On Friday night we drove out to Mendon, MA to a drive-in movie theater and saw a double feature of Indiana Jones and Iron Man. We had a great time and look forward to going back sometime this summer. We definitely suggest going to anyone in the area as it is quite a memorable experience.
On Saturday, we drove down to Plymouth, MA (last weekend we went to Salem, MA which is also a great trip to make) to go and see the town and the Plantation. Though we didn't make it to the Plantation, we really enjoyed walking around the town and just relaxing. From there we drove down to Providence, RI to go and see Water Fire. Water Fire is an art installation comprised of roughly 100 open fire pits hovering over the downtown rivers of Providence. The banks of the rivers are quickly packed by nightfall and you can take a boat ride on a Venetian gondola if you'd like to be even closer to the action. It is a great event to go and see if you have the chance. I'd definitely suggest checking out their website at the least.
Sunday Alicia had to work so I started prepping for my upcoming trip to Greece and then Alicia and I had a nice afternoon enjoying the weather from our deck. Very low key, but very enjoyable.
I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend.
My next posting will hopefully be from Athens, Greece, so stay tuned!
More later...
Monday, May 26, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
You might be an LFM student if...
- You view getting an engineering masters at MIT as "something you do in your spare time."
- You consider sleep to be a non-value-added process.
- You know many Japanese words, yet can't say anything meaningful to a Japanese person.
- The word "workaround" makes you physically ill.
- You've caught yourself optimizing how you make a sandwich.
- You lose sleep at night worrying you might accidentally leave your laptop unattended near other LFMs.
- Your computer costs more than your car.
- You know who Taiichi Ohno is, but not Daisuke Matsuzaka.
- You wield the name "Herbie" as an insult.
- You produce financial statements for your kitchen.
- You've used the terms "cycle-time," "bottleneck," or "continuous improvement" with a spouse or child in the last week.
- You feel the rate at which a fisherman catches fish can be modeled as a poisson process, yet find no humor in it.
- You analyze the operational strategies of characters in Disney movies.
- You view running out of cereal in the morning as a supply chain problem.
- Your version of the beer game is a lot less fun than those of your friends.
- You think baseball could use more statistics.
- You think that Toyota, Dell, and Progressive Insurance are similar companies.
- You travel to beautiful, exotic countries and then spend all your time visiting factories.
- You think $1 billion is a reasonable price for a green plant.
(a list posted around the LFM Offices)
- You consider sleep to be a non-value-added process.
- You know many Japanese words, yet can't say anything meaningful to a Japanese person.
- The word "workaround" makes you physically ill.
- You've caught yourself optimizing how you make a sandwich.
- You lose sleep at night worrying you might accidentally leave your laptop unattended near other LFMs.
- Your computer costs more than your car.
- You know who Taiichi Ohno is, but not Daisuke Matsuzaka.
- You wield the name "Herbie" as an insult.
- You produce financial statements for your kitchen.
- You've used the terms "cycle-time," "bottleneck," or "continuous improvement" with a spouse or child in the last week.
- You feel the rate at which a fisherman catches fish can be modeled as a poisson process, yet find no humor in it.
- You analyze the operational strategies of characters in Disney movies.
- You view running out of cereal in the morning as a supply chain problem.
- Your version of the beer game is a lot less fun than those of your friends.
- You think baseball could use more statistics.
- You think that Toyota, Dell, and Progressive Insurance are similar companies.
- You travel to beautiful, exotic countries and then spend all your time visiting factories.
- You think $1 billion is a reasonable price for a green plant.
(a list posted around the LFM Offices)
Monday, May 12, 2008
An Update...finally (again)...
Hello everyone. Well it has been one heck of a semester. One suggestion to future LFM's and Sloanies - only take one or two project based classes in a semester. This past semester I took 4 project classes and wow is that a lot of work! Here is an update on what has been going on in my life here at LFM:
The semester is wrapping up with classes ending on Thursday and my first and last exam next Monday. Lots of stress, but a lot of great projects are wrapping up and the sense of completion is nice.
In one of the last classes for "Laboratory for Sustainable Business," we were asked the question "Can the world sustain itself when our institutions and societies demand ever increasing economic growth?" After a good discussion about our thoughts, we were shown a very moving video of a speech by Robert F Kennedy discussing some of the problems with using the Gross National Product (now referred to as the Gross Domestic Product) as a means of acknowledging the countries well-being. I wanted to take a moment to post this video, as I thought that it was very relevant to today's world. Here is the video posted on YouTube.
Our project's goal is to help a microfinance institution in Peru enter the microinsurance industry. We have written two reports on the subject that our advisor thinks is some great work and he is adamant about having us travel to Peru in order to present our findings to the company. We may head down in two weeks to present our data. This would put quite a crunch on the team's time prior to the start of internship, but it would definitely be a great experience for all of us.
In "Projects for Change," my teammate and I are getting ready to hand off a manual of our research in the area of misoprostol (a drug used to prevent post-partum hemorrhaging - the leading cause of death during childbirth in developing countries) drug distribution in remote, resource-poor environments - in our case, Indonesia. We have spent the semester interviewing knowledge experts all around the world and performing literature reviews such as case studies, articles, etc. We have tried to capture the best practices from all of these resources and compile them into a reference manual that we will pass off to a first-year Harvard Medical student who will be traveling to Indonesia this summer to try to implement our results.
In "Product Design and Development," I was in a group of seven students (two of whom were very dysfunctional to our group and added no value to our project) and we were able to finish building our project by pulling an all-nighter the day before our final presentation. A photo of our product is shown here:
Our product is a dual-powered mass cell phone charger. The idea was that we wanted to develop an easily deployable system that could be used in emergency shelters and that would be able to be powered by both an outlet as well as a battery. There are four sides to our product so it has the capacity to charge up to 24 different cell phones at one time. Also, we have connectors that are able to charge roughly 80-90% of the existing domestic cell phones. I don't think that there is much of a market for the product, but it was a lot of fun to build with my 5 real teammates - though it was definitely "just-in-time" delivery to the product presentations.
In "Global Entrepreneurship Laboratory," a continuation of our Fall class, my team has been busy preparing for our upcoming three week trip to Athens, Greece, to work with a cosmetics company there. With our preliminary information gathering completed and having touched-base with professionals in the area of process improvement, we feel that we will be able to help our clients improve their process efficiencies greatly. We are also looking forward to spending three weeks living and working in Athens and sight-seeing around the countryside of Greece (at least on the weekends). It should be an amazing experience. Note to future LFM's: G-Lab has been an awesome experience and I hope that you all get a chance to take it. Unfortunately, given the constraints of the LFM program, the course may only be available to those LFM's who decide to take off-cycle internships. Just something to be aware of as you plan for your courses and your LFM experience.
Finally, I have completed a site-visit to my internship company and location. I will be spending the summer at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT working with the Strategic Sourcing department. I had a great time visiting the location and meeting my future boss and co-workers. I think that the project and internship experience will be great both personally and professionally. I can't wait to get started on it though I'll be delayed by three weeks for the G-Lab trip.
I'll try to do a better job with keeping you all informed about the trip to Greece and my internship. Hope that you are all doing well!
More later...
The semester is wrapping up with classes ending on Thursday and my first and last exam next Monday. Lots of stress, but a lot of great projects are wrapping up and the sense of completion is nice.
In one of the last classes for "Laboratory for Sustainable Business," we were asked the question "Can the world sustain itself when our institutions and societies demand ever increasing economic growth?" After a good discussion about our thoughts, we were shown a very moving video of a speech by Robert F Kennedy discussing some of the problems with using the Gross National Product (now referred to as the Gross Domestic Product) as a means of acknowledging the countries well-being. I wanted to take a moment to post this video, as I thought that it was very relevant to today's world. Here is the video posted on YouTube.
Our project's goal is to help a microfinance institution in Peru enter the microinsurance industry. We have written two reports on the subject that our advisor thinks is some great work and he is adamant about having us travel to Peru in order to present our findings to the company. We may head down in two weeks to present our data. This would put quite a crunch on the team's time prior to the start of internship, but it would definitely be a great experience for all of us.
In "Projects for Change," my teammate and I are getting ready to hand off a manual of our research in the area of misoprostol (a drug used to prevent post-partum hemorrhaging - the leading cause of death during childbirth in developing countries) drug distribution in remote, resource-poor environments - in our case, Indonesia. We have spent the semester interviewing knowledge experts all around the world and performing literature reviews such as case studies, articles, etc. We have tried to capture the best practices from all of these resources and compile them into a reference manual that we will pass off to a first-year Harvard Medical student who will be traveling to Indonesia this summer to try to implement our results.
In "Product Design and Development," I was in a group of seven students (two of whom were very dysfunctional to our group and added no value to our project) and we were able to finish building our project by pulling an all-nighter the day before our final presentation. A photo of our product is shown here:
Our product is a dual-powered mass cell phone charger. The idea was that we wanted to develop an easily deployable system that could be used in emergency shelters and that would be able to be powered by both an outlet as well as a battery. There are four sides to our product so it has the capacity to charge up to 24 different cell phones at one time. Also, we have connectors that are able to charge roughly 80-90% of the existing domestic cell phones. I don't think that there is much of a market for the product, but it was a lot of fun to build with my 5 real teammates - though it was definitely "just-in-time" delivery to the product presentations.
In "Global Entrepreneurship Laboratory," a continuation of our Fall class, my team has been busy preparing for our upcoming three week trip to Athens, Greece, to work with a cosmetics company there. With our preliminary information gathering completed and having touched-base with professionals in the area of process improvement, we feel that we will be able to help our clients improve their process efficiencies greatly. We are also looking forward to spending three weeks living and working in Athens and sight-seeing around the countryside of Greece (at least on the weekends). It should be an amazing experience. Note to future LFM's: G-Lab has been an awesome experience and I hope that you all get a chance to take it. Unfortunately, given the constraints of the LFM program, the course may only be available to those LFM's who decide to take off-cycle internships. Just something to be aware of as you plan for your courses and your LFM experience.
Finally, I have completed a site-visit to my internship company and location. I will be spending the summer at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT working with the Strategic Sourcing department. I had a great time visiting the location and meeting my future boss and co-workers. I think that the project and internship experience will be great both personally and professionally. I can't wait to get started on it though I'll be delayed by three weeks for the G-Lab trip.
I'll try to do a better job with keeping you all informed about the trip to Greece and my internship. Hope that you are all doing well!
More later...
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