Tag: BCTIM

You’re invited to attend the Operational Excellence Speaker Series Thursday, Feb. 26 featuring JoAnne Levy, vice president of Integrated Sourcing Solutions at ROi. The series is sponsored by the Boeing Center for Technology, Information & Manufacturing (BCTIM).

JoAnne Levy

Levy will be presenting on “A Transformational Journey: Building an Integrated Supply Chain in Health Care.” For more information, please click here.

Levy earned her undergraduate, law and MBA degrees from WashU. She is the second executive in this year’s BCTIM Operational Excellence Speaker Series. Dan Friedman kicked off the series last month.

Dan Friedman

Dan Friedman has 30 years of footwear industry experience and serves as Division President of Global Sourcing & International at Brown Shoe Company. Friedman combines oversight of Brown Shoe Co. Inc.’s worldwide sourcing operations with a responsibility for all branded wholesale product development and international.

To view Friedman’s presentation “Global Sourcing: Adapting to Transformational Changes in a Portfolio Footwear Company”, click here.

We hope you will join us for another inspiring talk and intellectual conversation!

Beer is a serious business. And we’re not just talking about having a few pints at the local pub. Graduate students in the supply chain management degree program studied the beer industry as part of a research project last semester for ABInBev in conjunction with Olin’s Boeing Center for Technology, Information and Manufacturing (BCTIM).

Masters in Supply Chain Management students Yucong Li, Weiyi Tang, Pu Zhang, and Junyan Zhang, MBA student Chris Walling and operations management Ph.D. student Seung Hwan Jung, under the active supervision and expert advice of the BCTIM Director and professor of supply chain management, Dr. Panos Kouvelis, engaged in a logistics efficiencies improvement project with global brewer, ABInBev.

The team provided solutions to improve operations logistics between the brewer, their contracted trucking companies, and the network of their wholesalers in a project entitled “Shipment Optimization at AB/InBev”. The team’s recommendations and spreadsheet tools, after implementation by the company, will result in higher shipment volumes on any given day without the need for increased trucking capacities, and with potential labor cost reduction at the shipping docks.

Click here to read more about the project scope.

Preparing professionals for key supply chain positions is a BCTIM priority. BCTIM’s experiential opportunities via mini-consulting projects with its member companies are grooming the next generation of supply chain leaders from Olin Business School’s Master of Science in Supply Chain Management (MSSCM) and MBA students specializing in operations management and supply chains. The students on each mini-consulting team tackle critical technology, information and supply chain issues, and work to find innovative solutions to member companies’ operational and management challenges.

Five to seven student teams are assembled each semester to tackle research projects with BCTIM’s key member companies like Monsanto, BE Aerospace, Boeing, Edward Jones, Emerson, Sigma Aldrich and more.

Professor David Simchi-Levi of Engineering Systems at MIT, delivered the 11^th Annual Meir Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture on Friday, Nov. 21 with a clear message on a change of direction in high impact operations management research. The lecture is sponsored by the Boeing Center for Technology, Information, and Manufacturing (BCTIM).

Guest Blog by: Panos Kouvelis and Guang Xiao

The title of his talk effectively encapsulates the message: “OM Research: From Problem Driven to Data Driven Research”.  In this lecture, he shared with the audience his experience and perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of doing research in the field of Operations Management from a practical point of view, and outlined a vision for the future of research in the operations management field.

His talk consisted of two main parts:

• Paradigm 1: Problem Driven Research
• Paradigm 2: Data Driven Research

For the problem driven part, he argued that the OM researcher should have the ability not only to apply theory in solving practical problems, but also to develop new theory inspired by the real world practice. To illustrate the former point (application of theory for solving complex real world problems) David described what he referred to as his “Manhattan project,” in which the “traveling salesman” algorithm was used to solve the New York City school bus routine problem, and resulted in significant cost savings, i.e., reduction of over 30%-40% in annual costs.

Professor David Simchi-Levi of Engineering Systems at MIT.

For the latter one (generalizable theory from practical challenges and best practices), David used examples from his recently published work on process flexibility. The Pepsi Bottling Company consulted with him on solving practical operational challenges on how to balance resources to better match supply with demand. David and his students applied the concept of process flexibility (flexible resources are enabled to handle multiple operational tasks) and achieved significant benefits for the company.

Of course, flexible resources are also expensive undertakings, and the natural question that arises is to what degree the flexibility of a resource should be developed in order to obtain effective system performance meeting the demands placed upon it. The answer was, ‘not that much,’ and for a system appropriately designed to take advantage of its limited flexibility resources its performance quickly approaches the performance of the fully flexible system.

Seeing the power of process flexibility, they explored deeper and developed a theory explaining the intriguing rationale of why even little flexibility used appropriately can result in tremendous performance improvements.

Shifting his emphasis on the role of data driven research, which uses data not only to uncover symptoms of problems but delves deeper into understanding the nature of the “true” problem and then uses the same data to model and optimize the performance of the studied system, David used his work for the “Rue La La” online retailing business as an example for the approach.

When digging into the company’s large sales data, he and his students found that the retail pricing practices were highly influencing the consumer’s purchasing behavior. Consequently, they incorporated the dynamic pricing strategy and learned through experimentation lessons of induced consumer behavior from it to build “smart pricing algorithms” resulting in a more than 10% increase in revenue for the company.

Guang Xiao, Operations and Manufacturing Management PhD candidate

Data driven research is a new research direction and thinking approach for the operations and supply management area, which will also require researchers with our unique combination of skill sets from diverse but analytically driven areas, such as Economics, Statistics, Econometrics, Stochastic Processes, Learning Theory, and Dynamic Optimization. It is a fruitful research with ample opportunities for high impact theory and valuable practical applications.

Panos Kouvelis, Director of BCTIM and Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management

David’s talk pointed out a trend and research direction that perfectly fits the philosophy and capabilities of our operations and supply chain management Olin faculty and fellows at our BCTIM Research Center. BCTIM will strongly pursue and sponsor activities in this direction and it will offer ample opportunities for both faculty and students in data driven research for high impact real world applications.

Please click here to view Mr. Simchi-Levi’s presentation.

Meir Rosenblatt’s legacy at Olin is greatly felt throughout the business school, in his colleague’s memories and his valued work. As the Myron Northrop Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management, Meir served as an Olin faculty member from 1987 to 2001. His value to the business school went beyond just his work; his influence and teachings in the classroom earned him the Olin Business School Teacher of the Year Award in back-to-back academic years in 1989-90 and 1990-91.

Rosenblatt was a prolific and high impact researcher with broad interests in production planning and inventory management, project management, global facility location, quantity discount practices, and power and influence in complex supply chains.

In tribute to his memory and legacy, BCTIM is proud to host an annual lecture series held in Meir’s name. Each year, we invite Meir’s colleagues, family friends, Olin students, and alumni to attend a lecture given by renowned academicians in the operations and supply chain management speaking on lessons learned from theory and practice on timely topics in operational excellence and supply chain innovation.

Past speakers have come from all over, including Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, where Meir was a professor of industrial engineering and management before his time at Olin. Other speakers have hailed from Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and MIT.

Last year’s speaker, Yossi Sheffi, is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His lecture was given on his research entitled “Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value & Driving Growth”.

(Left to Right) Panos Kouvelis, Zehava Rosenblatt, David Simchi-Levi

The 11th Annual Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture was held Nov. 21, featuring speaker David Simchi-Levi. Simchi-Levi is a professor of engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The focus of his research is developing and implementing robust and efficient techniques for logistics and manufacturing systems and he is considered one of the premier thought leaders in supply chain management.

Simchi-Levi recently received awards for his research in revenue management, and the prestigious Daniel H. Wagner Operations Research Practice Award on his recent research project with Ford Motor company on developing the Risk Exposure Index (REI) for effective supply chain risk management. He lectured on “OM Research: From Problem-Driven to Data-Driven Research.”

Panos Kouvelis contributed to this blog post.

In a recent research seminar of The Boeing Center on Technology, Information and Manufacturing (BCTIM) at Olin Business School, interesting issues on capacity and risk management in a commodity industry, specifically palm production and distribution which are representative of many agricultural supply chain activities, were discussed.

Guest Blog by: Panos Kouvelis and Guang Xiao

Professor Onur Boyabatli, from our partner university Singapore Management University (SMU) presented his most recent paper “Capacity Management in Agricultural Commodity Processing and Application in the Palm Industry” in the first seminar of our Fall Lecture Series in operations and supply chain management. He illustrated the common operational challenges that palm producers face due to the uncertain production and market environments, e.g., production yield risk, input and output price risk, etc.

Professor Boyabatli proposed a multi-period model to capture a palm producer’s processing, storage, and selling decisions as well as the long-time capacity investment strategy. He provided several interesting managerial insights and suggestions regarding to the production activities in similar uncertain environments. First, storage capacity should be adjusted in response to a change in output price volatility. Second, byproduct volume and margin considerations are important for overall profitability, and focusing only on main product profits while ignoring byproducts may lead to lost opportunities in certain markets and significant overall profit loss. Finally, overlooking yield uncertainty also has significant negative impact on the processor’s profitability. These insights were supported through both analytical and computational results using actual palm processing data.

Professor Boyabatli’s talk not only provided useful background knowledge of the palm industry practices, but also stimulated many thought provoking discussions among the seminar participants. Hopefully, more research can be inspired by linking the integrated supply chain risk management with industry practices among the faculty members and doctoral students after this talk.

Some of our faculty are strongly interested in risk management commodity processing industries, and the work of Professor Panos Kouvelis, Ling Dong and Danko Turcic examines interesting risk management aspects of such industries. At the same time we hope that relevant business research, like the one highlighted above, will intrigue industry executives and managers in improved practices effectively guiding their actual capacity and production planning processes.

Some biographical details of the presenting author: Onur Boyabatli is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University. He earned his PhD degree in Technology and Operations Management from INSEAD, France. His primary research interest is on the integrated risk management in supply chain with application in agricultural industries.

BCTIM is buzzzzzing with activity; we’re busy, busy! With so many great events on the calendar, we’re expecting to see lots of bright faces, some familiar and some new!

Here’s a first look at what we’ve got coming up:

BCTIM’s Operational Excellence Seminar Series will start this year with John Stroup, CEO & President of Belden, Inc. presenting “A New Era in Manufacturing Management: Manufacturing Closer to Home Markets”. Join us on October 23rd for this interactive and intriguing lecture.

The Fall Lecture Seminar Series continues with the next lecture on November 7th, featuring Onur Boyabatli, visiting professor from Singapore Management University.

The 11th Annual Meir J. Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture will be November 21st. This special event is in honor Meir J. Rosenblatt, who taught at Olin Business School as the Myron Northrop Distinguished Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management. This year’s Lecture will feature David Simchi-Levi of MIT, presenting “OM Research: From Problem-Driven to Data Driven Research”. Please visit our Rosenblatt Memorial site for more information and registration to this event.