We just finished a fantastic conference on Global Operations on December 2 and 3. LGO, along with SDM, the Industrial Liaison Program, and the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation, sponsored the conference. We had a number of significant speeches, including the keynotes Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman for Operations and Technology at Dell, and Tom Van Laar, Head of Pharmaceutical Global Technical Operations at Novartis. It was very gratifying to see a significant number of alumni here.
We are also in the midst of career development and internship activities. We are close to reaching our goal for internships, but we are still short. If any of your companies are interested in sponsoring internships, we may be able to accommodate you.
Finally, we want to note a transition. Debra Woog McGinty, who has led admissions and career development for the past five years, will be stepping down at the end of the year. We hope that she will continue in some role as a consultant next year. Debra has made a number of significant contributions to LGO, including playing the major role in the name change. We will very much miss her.
Donald B. Rosenfield
Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management
Director, LGO Fellows Program
The CLFM Synergy Committee, the group of students on the LGO side responsible for synergy with their China LFM counterparts, is seeking companies to sponsor a Lion Team. Similar to a tiger teams in an international business environment, Lion Teams consist of 6-7 global operations leadership fellows from the two programs who act as "consultants" to the partnering business. Ideal projects work with all levels of an organization's hierarchy on challenging problems identified by the client organization's leadership. The projects provide hands-on educational experience while providing a valuable resource to the client organization. The final deliverable is a set of tactical recommendations for the client.
A typical project timeline will include 2-3 weeks of foundation work, mainly working with the lead within the sponsoring company. Shortly thereafter the LGO team will meet with the CLFM team on-site in China for an intensive one-week project immersion and information-gathering period. Over the next 5-7 weeks, the LGO and CLFM team members will work together remotely to develop a solution to the client's problem, which will ultimately be delivered to the sponsoring company via video teleconferencing or in person.
Students receive class credit from MIT for their involvement, and projects are, therefore, free of charge to the sponsoring organizations. The company need only cover travel and lodging expenses (typically ~$10,000). The committee is currently looking for projects that could be done in the spring timeframe.
Lion Teams were successfully piloted last year with one of the CLFM partner companies. This spring we already have at least two more projects committed, but many more students interested and enthusiastic about these projects. Don Rosenfield is the supervising faculty.
If you think your company or organization has a project that would lend itself to a team of LGO and CLFM students, please contact Todd Waldron at twaldron@mit.edu or Cynthia Wilson at cmwilson@mit.edu.
TopDo you have a blog? LGO is seeking alumni blogs with which we can link our program blog. Email debrawm@mit.edu if you have an alumni blog to recommend to us. Also, if you'd like to link your site to lgo.mit.edu, or to our blog at lgo-blog.mit.edu, we'd appreciate it!
Debra Woog McGinty
MIT Leaders for Global Operations Program
Director of Admissions and Career Development
In addition to the MIT LGO LinkedIn group, we have now started a LinkedIn group for MBAs and other growth-oriented professionals to discuss the trials and tribulations of career development. Please join us: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2537704&trk=anet_ug_grppro.
TopDVDs of the 2009 MIT Global Operations Conference are available upon request. Please contact Lois Slavin (lslavin@mit.edu). Presentations can be viewed at http://ilp-www.mit.edu/display_event_agenda.a4d?key=P4b&eventId=5105. Click on the "Download PDF" links.
TopSpecial thanks to SDM 08 student John Kluza on his great presentation on December 4 from his award-winning thesis entitled "Status of Grid Scale Energy Storage and Strategies for Accelerating Cost Effective Deployment."
We have some wonderful alumni web seminars upcoming! Information about seminars and instructions on how to register will go out for each event.
If you are in a position at your company where you have a unique perspective on topics of interest to LGO and SDM alumni or you're working a project that you think our alumni community would like to hear about, consider doing a web seminar. Contact Jon Griffith at jong@mit.edu for more information.
Remember: we're now making podcasts of presentations available for people in the LGO/SDM community. You can get the podcasts on our past seminar site at:
https://lgosdm.mit.edu/VCSS/web_seminars/past_webseminars.jsp
Log-in for the past presentations, including the podcast versions, is:
username: lgo
password: e40
To subscribe to the feed using iTunes, copy the feed URL: http://lgosdm.mit.edu/podcasts/protected/feed.xml. In iTunes, under Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast, paste the URL and click okay.
As always, to register for future events or to see upcoming seminars that are scheduled, go to:
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1. Go to https://lgosdm.mit.edu/VCSS/web_seminars/webseminars.jsp
Projects profiled this month are from the LGO10 Midstream Review. This month’s focus is on improving the demand forecasting done at Kimberly Clark Corporation by Daniel Uriarte and at Intel Corporation by Emily Smith. If you have companies or areas of research you are interested in having highlighted in the monthly news please contact Ted Equi tedequi@mit.edu.
Name: Daniel A. Uriarte MacKenzie
Company: Kimberly Clark Corporation
Supervisor: Luis Capocci
Academic Advisors: Don Rosenfield and Chris Caplice
Title: Process Improvements for Reliable Demand Forecasts
Summary:
Kimberly-Clark is a leading global health and hygiene company employing nearly 53,000 people worldwide and posting sales of $19.4 billion in 2008. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with operations in 35 countries, KC’s global brands are sold in more than 150 countries. With well-known family and personal care brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, Poise and Depend, KC holds the No. 1 or 2 share position in more than 80 countries.
As a consumer product company, most of Kimberly-Clark products are make-to-stock; therefore, having accurate forecasts is fundamental for successful planning and execution. The forecasting process touches Finance, Commercial, and Supply Chain functions, requiring collaboration among these groups to capture current promotional activities and future market trends into the forecast, while managing inventory levels. In addition, pressure on working capital due to current global economic conditions, as well as the growth of the Modern market and its promotional activities, has intensified the need for a more reliable demand forecast system.
Development of a current state map of KC´s forecasting system revealed several conditions that result in conflicts between the commercial organization and the planning function:
To resolve these conflicts, this internship project focuses on two areas: 1. Implementing a process and organization to foster coordination and cooperation and 2. Improving forecasting methodology through data and models to reduce forecast errors and optimize inventory levels.
Preliminary Results and Next Steps:
Name: Emily Smith
Company: Intel Corporation
Supervisor: HC Lam, Craig Nastanski
Academic Advisors: Charlie Fine and Abbott Weiss
Title: Utilizing Customer Supply Chain Knowledge to Improve Demand Forecasting
Summary:
Intel is currently in the process of revising its ordering systems to better match customer’s expectations. OEM’s fix production cycles 2 weeks ahead of time and many work on built to order systems. Intel is changing its ordering process to accommodate the 2 week demand period of its customers.
The issue revolves around the mismatch between Intel’s and customer’s build timing. From previous thesis is has been shown that the production planning process takes around 13 weeks. While much has been done to improve the reactivity of the current production process, there is still a fundamental disconnect in build timing. This problem is currently solved through forecasting that is heavily reliant on the customer.
The purpose of this internship to determine what the supply chain looks like after a mobile computer leaves the factory. The supply chain information will be used to create a new data point for demand forecasting. The result should allow Intel to monitor and react to consumption changes faster than relying on customers to change their demand forecast. The average supply chain is 12 weeks which allows Intel the foresight needed to change production based on reviewing of consumption patterns and inventory building and burning at stops along the supply chain.
Currently, a basic picture of the supply chain has been developed. Through this picture of the supply chain the average length of time a product spends from Intel to arriving at an end user is 14 weeks. The next steps will be in determining the supply chain in depth in for each geo. Especially, in the emerging markets where pathways products take can be very convoluted.
LGO Thedinga Named Siebel Scholar
LGO Blogs – Check out blogs by LGO students, alumni and staff!
As a result of a reporter’s attendance at the 2009 MIT/SDM Conference on Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challenges, Profs. Deborah Nightingale and Gigi Hirsch and SDM ‘07 Ragu Bharadwaj were quoted in this New York Times column about improving the drug development process.
Seeking a Shorter Path to New Drugs
The New York Times – November 15, 2009
How to Streamline Drug Research?
The New York Times Freakonomics blog – November 16, 2009
Also picked up in The Boston Globe – November 15, 2009
TopLGO Student Program site: http://lgo.mit.edu
Log in to the Virtual Community for alumni information, to find other alumni, update your information, or find theses. If you have trouble getting in, contact lgosdmvc@mit.edu, or use the "forgot password" button. If the email address you submit is in our system, your username and password will be sent to you.
Jon Griffith, Operations and Partner Integration
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