Tag: Emerson



The first in a series about CEL practicums from Olin MBA students. Today, we hear from the Emerson team. Members of the team are Chi Yee, Annabelle Zhu, Anne Chen, Gaurav Malik, Leo Huang, Claire Liu and Lehai Li.

Emerson, a global manufacturing company that addresses some of the world’s most complex challenges with innovative solutions, is actively seeking to evolve the organization toward more data-driven decision-making in its marketing functions.

Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning team was thrilled to have the opportunity to work closely with key stakeholders from Emerson’s Commercial & Residential Solutions platform to develop a playbook for the company to deploy across its businesses to help better leverage data in its daily workflow.

Cross-company conversations

To better understand the company structure, workflow and respective business unit data utilization levels, the CEL team conducted 30 interviews with key marketing and IT team members. These conversations were extremely helpful in understanding how the various businesses are leveraging data and the challenges encountered as teams are adopting a more data-driven culture.

It was through these cross-company conversations that the CEL team was able to learn more about Emerson’s organizational culture and how it leverages data into business-level decisionmaking.

Pictured above: the Emerson CEL Team: Chi Yee, Annabelle Zhu, Anne Chen, Gaurav Malik, Leo Huang, Claire Liu, Lehai Li

These conversations oriented the CEL team and equipped us to understand overarching challenges in using data to make marketing decisions. Recognizing these challenges, the CEL team is developing a playbook that defines and prioritizes key performance indices across the customer journey.

In addition to enabling business marketing teams to track and measure their overall marketing channel effectiveness, the playbook will also help identify data gaps. Understanding that the playbook must be user-friendly and applicable to business teams that are at varying stages of data use, the CEL team worked closely with Emerson to ensure alignment with current marketing workflows across the organization.

Additionally, Olin Business School professors Michael Wall and Seethu Seetharaman provided the team with a lot of guidance and professional expertise that helped ensure that the CEL team was developing an actionable and responsive tool.

Adjusting to a crisis

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 created some uncertainty within the scope of this project, especially given the preferred high level of stakeholder engagement preferred. The CEL team worked closely with Emerson, however, to facilitate a smooth transition to online meetings that would minimize any disruption in project delivery.

The CEL practicum was an invaluable experience that allowed the team to gain exposure to challenges that many companies face as businesses continue to embrace more sources of data and incorporate insights into daily decision-making processes.

This project, in particular, allowed the CEL team to hear from executives at the highest levels in the organization and understand how they are thinking about the future of their business. This project gave the CEL team members the opportunity to apply what they are currently learning in their classes to a “real world” corporate challenge.

This project broadened our perspectives beyond the classroom and better-equipped us to become key contributors to organizations in our future careers.

Pictured above: Emerson Representatives: Mark Dunson, Dennis Traver, Jim Squires, Tracy Reiter; CEL Faculty Advisors: Michael Wall, Seethu Seetharaman; CEL fellow: Sarah Fuller; CEL Team: Chi Yee; Annabelle Zhu; Anne Chen; Gaurav Malik; Leo Huang; Claire Liu




Twenty years ago, through the exceptional generosity of the McDonnell Douglas Foundation, The Boeing Center for Technology, Information, and Manufacturing was endowed in the Olin Business School. Since then, we have served as a powerful catalyst for technology-driven innovation, process optimization, risk management, and global supply chain excellence.

In honor of our 20th anniversary, and to more accurately reflect our focus, we adopted a new look and changed our name to The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation. And with a renewed vigor, we completed the most successful year in our history. Not only did we work on a record number of corporate projects, but we also hosted several events featuring exceptional speakers and supported research on a number of cutting-edge topics.

This spring, we welcomed Mike Pinedo, the Julius Schlesinger Professor of Operations Management at New York University, to talk about operational risk management in the service industry at our 13th annual Meir Rosenblatt memorial lecture. And we welcomed John Stroup, President and CEO of Belden Inc., to share his perspectives on Industry 4.0 and the emerging technologies that will impact the manufacturing industry and beyond. Both presentations were intellectually stimulating and thought provoking.

We also held our inaugural project competition and awards ceremony, the Project of the Year Symposium, which highlighted our top five corporate projects from the 2016-2017 academic year. The Symposium featured presentations from our student teams that worked on projects for Anheuser-Busch InBev, Belden, Boeing, Emerson, and Monsanto. The teams competed for awards in “Project of the Year,” “Greatest Immediate Business Impact,” and “Presentation Excellence,” and split a $10,500 prize pool. A summary of all our spring projects can be found below.

Our 3rd annual Supply Chain Finance & Risk Management Conference took place on May 14-15. The aim of the conference, which was attended by prominent academic researchers from top business schools from around the world, was to stimulate interactions and knowledge sharing at the interface of operations and finance, and supply chain risk management. The conference featured presentations based on current research trends, including real operations and risk management, crowd funding, finance, trade credit, and hedging. There was also a panel discussion on emerging themes and directions of the field.  One of the initiatives resulting from the conference will be an edited book, comprised of short papers submitted by attendees, to be published this fall as an issue in the Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management book series.

We would also like to share with you some of the corporate projects The Boeing Center and student teams have led for our corporate clients this year.

Lastly, we would like to thank all of our corporate member companies for providing us with the opportunity to offer valuable experiential learning to our students, who dedicated long hours to ensure delivery of insightful and impactful supply chain solutions. We hope you all had an awesome summer, and we look forward to working with you again soon!


Learn more about sponsored projects and membership through The Boeing Center.

Anheuser-Busch InBev

This project revolved around optimizing the inventory mix at distribution centers for some of ABI’s craft beer products, particularly Stella Artois. The team utilized mathematical models with the potential to reduce accessorial costs and increase product freshness. Student team:  Miles Bolinger, Sam Huo, Huyen Nguyen, Roberto Ortiz, and Jon Slack.

 

Belden

The team working on this project used the QR inventory modeling approach to identify opportunities and costs for improving service levels at PPC, a Belden subsidiary in Syracuse, NY.  Student team:  Bonnie Bao, Michael Stein, Yuying Wang, and Yuyao Zhu.

 

Boeing

The goal of this project was to determine the most influential order and part characteristics affecting on-time delivery statistics of Boeing’s transactional spare parts business.  Student team:  Vineet Chauhan, Phil Goetz, Brian Liu, Sontaya Sherrell, and Fan Zhang.

 

Edward Jones

The team’s objective was to analyze the technology deployment process at Edward Jones. They did this by conducting interviews and collecting survey data to run a capacity analysis and generate a personnel network diagram.  Student team:  Huang Deng, Wyatt Gutierrez, Cynthia Huang, Drew Ruchte, and Jamie Yue.

 

Emerson

The Emerson project team worked with ProTeam’s Richmond Hill facility to determine the optimal product mix, optimize inventory management of stock, and develop a data analysis model to facilitate future upkeep of the system.  Student team:  Kushal Chawla, Serena Chen, Kai Ji, Jeffrey Lantz, and Zoe Zhao.

 

Express Scripts

The purpose of this project was to optimize Express Scripts’ distribution network by considering logistics costs, formulary configuration, and inventory vs. service levels.  Student team:  Himanshu Aggarwal, Jinsoo Chang, and Janet Qian.

 

MilliporeSigma

In this project, the team worked with MilliporeSigma’s facility in Temecula, CA to develop a model to help determine the economic production quantity for each SKU based on customer demand, production cost, inventory value, and shelf life.  Student team:  Perri Goldberg, Youngho Kim, Ayshwarya Rangarajan, Prateek Sureka, and Flora Teng.

 

Monsanto

The objective of this project was to understand, define, and map out the credit processes within Monsanto.  Student team:  Hai Cao, Yanyan Li, Ashwin Kumar, Jonathan Neff, Tom Siepman, and Xukun Zan.

 

West Pharmaceutical Services

This project sought to accurately compute the approximate safety stock levels, reorder points, and replenishment quantities at West Pharma’s Kinston plant using a continuous review model.  Student team:  Matthew Drory, Rohan Kamalia, Mrigank Kanoi, Ray Tang, and Jiani Zhai.

 


For more supply chain digital content and cutting-edge research, check us out on the socials [@theboeingcenter] and our website [olin.wustl.edu/bcsci]

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Kathy Button BellKathy Button Bell, Chief Marketing Officer at Emerson is one of the executives who shares advice from mentors in a new e-book from Bizwomen, Mentors Across America. The book is free and available here.

It contains inspiring quotes from successful women nation wide. Kathy Button Bell shared her career experience with Olin’s Women & Leadership course. David Farr, Emerson’s Chairman and CEO, also spoke to the class and is pictured pictured above with Button Bell.

Here’s an excerpt from Mentors Across America with advice from Button Bell who says, “I have had several incredible mentors give me great advice across many businesses.”

1. Rip your ‘to-do’ list in half.

Prioritize tightly to the most important three ‘high-value projects’ you/your business can accomplish.

2. Go big or go home.

None of us has enough budget to do everything. Pick one to two big attention opportunities and throw all we have against those tight choices. Good money after good.

3. Make your boss a hero.

Always keep your station in mind, take their priorities as your own. Knock it out of the park on their behalf. Enjoy the view.”

Link to related blog post, a profile of Kathy Button Bell

 




www.barlowpro.com

Kathy Button Bell

Kathy Button Bell connected with Emerson in 1999 after being president of her own company, Button Brand Development, a marketing consulting firm. She was executive director of worldwide marketing communications for North Andover, MA-based Converse Inc. and director of advertising and public relations for Wilson Sporting Goods Co., in Chicago.

Among other things, Button Bell has been a wonderful contributor in the classroom, judged multiple times, and has been part of the success of Olin’s Women’s Leadership Forum. Through these efforts and more, she exemplifies what it means to be a Friend of Olin. Friends are those who are giving of their time, their knowledge, share their years of experience, and who open the doors of their companies to students and faculty to help Olin build better leaders.

Some friendly questions for Friends of Olin:

What has been one of your most valuable experiences at Olin Business School? 

I have really enjoyed my experience with the Women’s Leadership Forum. Faculty members, such as Hillary Sale and Michelle Duguid, regularly share the latest and greatest on leadership research while the Forum provides opportunity for women to tap the great advice from our community’s business leaders. The access to and partnership with these female leaders has been outstanding.

What is the most compelling thing your mentor has done for you?

David Farr, Emerson’s CEO, has always been an unflinching supporter of our most progressive marketing efforts. He has placed an enormous amount of trust in our marketing teams, offering all of us ‘creative runway’. His willingness to push marketing boundaries inspires us to constantly seek ways to make Emerson more unique and modern.

What are the 3 biggest challenges facing leaders today?

• Short-term focus of the market
• Global / political instability
• The modern work environment. In the last several years, workplace dynamics have changed dramatically. Companies are expected to develop meaningful relationships with their employees like never before. This pressures internal communication to be more transparent and in tune to employees’ needs.

What is the one behavior or trait you have seen impede leaders’ careers?

Personal insulation. The easiest way to fall behind is to get trapped in your own bubble.

Tell us about a pivotal moment in your career.

Joining Emerson. Coming from a consumer marketing background, the industrial world was an underdeveloped environment. It has been fun to introduce sound and color to a company in the BtoB space. Most gratifying of all is helping to accelerate change in an established, successful culture.

What are you grateful for today? Why?

A happy, healthy child (in college). Better than any other accomplishment, I’m grateful to have raised an independent young man.

Who’s your favorite business speaker or author? Why?

Keith Yamashita, the founder and chairman of SYPartners. He wrote the book on corporate anniversaries, and his ideas completely turned around my perspective on corporate milestones. He took the notion of a moment in time and turned it into a deep meaningful lesson on corporate ethos and growth.




Six members of the Washington University in St. Louis faculty have been honored with 2015 Emerson “Excellence in Teaching” awards. Olin’s Durai Sundaramoorthi, senior lecturer in management, was one of the awardees recognized at a ceremony Nov. 22 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Clayton.

SundaramoorthiDurai Sundaramoorthi received his PhD in Industrial Engineering (Operations Research) from the University of Texas at Arlington. He performed his doctoral research in the Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, and Statistics (COSMOS). He also has an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Bharathiar University, India.

Prior to joining Olin, he held full time faculty positions at University of Missouri-Rolla and Missouri Western State University. His research interests include Business Analytics, Data Mining, Optimization, Simulation, and Simulation-based Optimization applied to diverse applications.

emersonEIT-Logo-2015-696x1024The other WashU honorees:

  • Janet Duchek, PhD, of Arts & Sciences
  • Guy Genin, PhD, of the School of Engineering & Applied Science
  • Barbara Kunkel, PhD, of Arts & Sciences
  • Joseph Loewenstein, PhD, of Arts & Sciences
  • Arny Nadler, of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

The honorees were chosen by their schools or by the university’s Teaching Center for their achievements and dedication to undergraduate teaching.