- 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)
Monday, May 19, 2008
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...
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Nagoya - in two weeks!
So Alicia and I had a wonderful trip to China. We spent a couple of days traveling around Beijing to see the Great Wall of China, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, not to mention the Bird’s Nest and Swimming Center for the Olympic Games. We don’t know if Beijing will be finished with all of the work that they need to accomplish as they seem to have construction projects in every section of the city with some amazing projects yet to even be started! We'll see in August if they are able to finish.
A great time was had though and Alicia and I had a spectacular last day in town during which we went exploring on our own and witnessed some interesting aspects to the city that we had missed previously such as the early evening in the hutongs.
From Beijing, Alicia returned home while I continued on to meet up with the International Plant Trek in Shanghai via a quick stop in Hong Kong, my new favorite city. Very tropical and an interesting mix of eastern and western cultures, Hong Kong was able to surprise me at every turn. Shanghai on the complete other end of the spectrum was non-western friendly in that every road sign was in Chinese and it was very hard to get a good map of the city so my skills at getting around were very taxed. By the end of our 4 nights in town, I had a handle on the area of the city that we were staying in at least. We had a good time in Shanghai meeting the CLFM students and seeing a couple of factories. The highlight of these factory tours was seeing an Apple supplier who produces some of the parts for the MacBook Air. We also had a great event titled the Global Operations Leadership Dinner (still looking for an article to send to post about this) in which we had many media, industry representatives, LFM alumni and both LFM and CLFM classes take part in discussions about the current manufacturing environment in China – very enlightening.
From China, we headed to Tokyo, Japan where we spent a few nights as we headed on a day trip to Nagoya to see a Toyota facility. Not quite the manufacturer’s holy grail that some of my classmates were hoping for, but at the same time, the trip helped prove that the Toyota Production System is amazing due to its simplicity of execution. An interesting lesson to be learned. I definitely feel like I want to get back over to Japan for another visit as I didn’t get a chance to see much of the cultural side of life, though we were blessed with the Cherry Blossoms coming into full bloom while we were in town.
Here are some photos from the trip to Asia.
Hope you enjoy!
More later...
A great time was had though and Alicia and I had a spectacular last day in town during which we went exploring on our own and witnessed some interesting aspects to the city that we had missed previously such as the early evening in the hutongs.
From Beijing, Alicia returned home while I continued on to meet up with the International Plant Trek in Shanghai via a quick stop in Hong Kong, my new favorite city. Very tropical and an interesting mix of eastern and western cultures, Hong Kong was able to surprise me at every turn. Shanghai on the complete other end of the spectrum was non-western friendly in that every road sign was in Chinese and it was very hard to get a good map of the city so my skills at getting around were very taxed. By the end of our 4 nights in town, I had a handle on the area of the city that we were staying in at least. We had a good time in Shanghai meeting the CLFM students and seeing a couple of factories. The highlight of these factory tours was seeing an Apple supplier who produces some of the parts for the MacBook Air. We also had a great event titled the Global Operations Leadership Dinner (still looking for an article to send to post about this) in which we had many media, industry representatives, LFM alumni and both LFM and CLFM classes take part in discussions about the current manufacturing environment in China – very enlightening.
From China, we headed to Tokyo, Japan where we spent a few nights as we headed on a day trip to Nagoya to see a Toyota facility. Not quite the manufacturer’s holy grail that some of my classmates were hoping for, but at the same time, the trip helped prove that the Toyota Production System is amazing due to its simplicity of execution. An interesting lesson to be learned. I definitely feel like I want to get back over to Japan for another visit as I didn’t get a chance to see much of the cultural side of life, though we were blessed with the Cherry Blossoms coming into full bloom while we were in town.
Here are some photos from the trip to Asia.
Hope you enjoy!
More later...
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Some photos
I've finally added some photos from Plant Trek, the Autoshow, around Boston and even some of the ones from El Salvador. You can check them out here. I'll be heading to China, Hong Kong and Japan leaving next weekend and traveling for two weeks. I'll have those photos up a lot sooner than these photos.
Hope that you enjoy.
More later...
Hope that you enjoy.
More later...
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Marketing Project Help!
Hey everyone,
Can you do me a favor and help with my marketing project? All I need you to do is go here and fill out the survey. That's it. Simple. And it should take less than 1 minute.
Thanks in advance!
More later...
Can you do me a favor and help with my marketing project? All I need you to do is go here and fill out the survey. That's it. Simple. And it should take less than 1 minute.
Thanks in advance!
More later...
Monday, March 3, 2008
I can't believe it...
So, it is almost the end of the first half of the Spring semester. Boy is it moving a LOT faster than the Fall. I feel that we are just getting started on a lot of the different projects that I am working on, and in some cases we are just getting started, and then after next week is Sloan Innovation Period (SIP) and then Spring Break! LFM's aren't required to stick around for SIP so Alicia and I are heading off to Beijing to sightsee for a week before I head off to Hong Kong and then on to Shanghai to meet up with the LFM International Plant Trek (which includes a trip to Japan to visit a Toyota facility!). Unfortunately, significant others (SO's) aren't allowed to go on any of the plant tours so it didn't make sense for Alicia to stick around for the following week. We are very excited about our upcoming trip though I will post more on that later.
The internship matchings finally came through last week. I will be spending the Summer/Fall working for Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT. I'll have to see what I can post about the internship once I get in touch with them about the assignment. With the non-disclosure agreements, I am assuming that I won't be able to post too much, but I may be able to post about some of the trips that I will end up taking to Russia, China, India and possibly Mexico. We'll see though.
More later...
The internship matchings finally came through last week. I will be spending the Summer/Fall working for Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT. I'll have to see what I can post about the internship once I get in touch with them about the assignment. With the non-disclosure agreements, I am assuming that I won't be able to post too much, but I may be able to post about some of the trips that I will end up taking to Russia, China, India and possibly Mexico. We'll see though.
More later...
One more SLST Post
More articles on our time in New Orleans:
Forbes.com
New Orleans City Business
Science Daily
Pretty cool stuff. Hope you enjoy the articles.
Forbes.com
New Orleans City Business
Science Daily
Pretty cool stuff. Hope you enjoy the articles.
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