Tag: Express Scripts

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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Missouri Governor Eric Greitens appointed Julia G. Brncic, EMBA 2013, to the University of Missouri Board of Curators in July. Brncic will be one of two women on the nine-member board.

Brncic is Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Express Scripts. She has previously worked as Assistant General Counsel and Senior Council for Express Scripts. Brncic holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Purdue University. She holds a law degree (2000), and an executive master’s of business administration degree (2013), both from Washington University.

“The Board of Curators, the governing body of the University of Missouri, consists of nine members, who are appointed by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; provided, that at least one but no more than two shall be appointed from each congressional district, and no person shall be appointed a curator who shall not be a citizen of the United States, and who shall not have been a resident of the state of Missouri two years prior to his appointment. Not more than five curators shall belong to any one political party.

“The term of service of the curators shall be six years, the terms of three expiring every two years. Curators, while attending the meetings of the board, shall receive their actual expenses, which shall be paid out of the ordinary revenues of the university.” – from the UM Board of Curators website.

On February 25, the Olin Supply Chain and Operations Association (SCOPA) held its second annual symposium at Knight Center. Seven Olin alumni and industry experts from Deloitte, Accenture, Equifax, Express Scripts, and BJC Healthcare joined a mixed group of 33 students in the MBA and Master of Supply Chain and Customer Analytics programs to discuss the topic of ‘Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain & Operations.’

The topics that we discussed included the definition of big data in various industries, types of big data, the IT implementation and human resources support, the use of big data in real-world business and lastly, the soft and technical skills students need to learn before going into the advanced data analytics field. The discussion was very inspiring. We were not only able to gain industry insights first hand, but some of us also discovered career opportunities and even potential business opportunities among participating companies and students’ employers.

Panelists speak at the 2016 SCOPA Symposium.

The symposium was very successful. Both the students and the panelists believed that it was a great learning opportunity. After the event, the panelists from Deloitte explicitly expressed that they would love to come back next year to meet more students and provide more learning and networking opportunities. Events like these makes them even more interested in our talent here at Olin.

Last but not least, I want to express my special thanks to Mark Schlafly, Karen Heise and Lisa Hebert from the Weston Career Center and Sally Michael from the Management Communication Center. The event would not have been this successful without their huge support. At the beginning of the preparation stage, we experienced some difficulty inviting the right industry experts. Karen and Sally even generously shared their personal contacts to help SCOPA with the event. This is a great example of the collaboration among WCC, MCC, and student organizations. Olin is really a place where everyone truly cares about your success. You know you could always get genuine support from this close-knit community.

Moving forward, SCOPA plans to maintain and expand its network with companies. We hope to host another symposium in the Fall semester when most students are looking for internship/full-time opportunities, and organize more Lunch & Learn opportunities.

Guest blogger: Joyce Song, MBA ’17

Express Scripts Holding Company, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is a Fortune 100 company and is the largest pharmacy benefit management organization in the United States. The company model: “We make the use of prescription of drugs safer and more affordable,” brings benefits and convenience to millions of patients across the country.

It was a great opportunity for GMF II students to take a tour of Express Scripts led by David Myers, who has served as Vice Present in Investor Relations for 14 years, and Jamie Kates, who is currently the Director of Investor Relations.

We appreciate that David and Jamie gave us an overview of the company and then deeply went through the responsibilities of the Investor Relations Department. For example, the role of investor relations is as follows: increasing understanding of the company, strategic communications and differentiation, serving as liaison to the financial community, conveying competitive intelligence to management, anticipating questions, and managing expectations.

Also, they gave us an insight on branded and generic drugs, which was really fascinating. As a group of young graduates with future business desires, we were impressed by this presentation.

Afterwards, we took a tour of the pharmacy center and research lab. It was interesting to note that 90% of the pharmacy center consists of an automatic production line; only 10% are manual production. All of the facilities were self-invented–we saw a wall of patents hanging on the wall.

As for the research lab, the working environment was very nice–the office facilities were all very innovative, and their design was modern and advanced. Moreover, most employees are PhD’s in Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry, or Engineering. Working among these highly intelligent people would be very challenging.

Guest Bloggers: Danlei Zhang, Yi Zhang (GMF 2015)

Honored as one of Olin’s 2015 Distinguished Alumni, Dr. Steve Miller, is also a great friend and supporter of the business school community. This is the first in a series featuring “Friends of Olin” from the Office of Corporate Relations.

Dr. Steve Miller has served as Chief Medical Officer at Express Scripts since 2006, focusing on supporting government relations, leading the Pharmacy & Therapeutics committee, managing the Medical Affairs team and interfacing with client groups.

Steven Miller (EMBA 2002), is Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Express Scripts Holding Company.
©Photo by Jerry Naunheim Jr.

He received his medical degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and he trained in the Pathology and Research fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado, Nephrology at Washington University, and did a cardiology research fellowship at University of California-San Francisco. Miller earned his MBA at Olin.

Dr. Miller has presented the commencement address for EMBA Class 40 and Shanghai EMBA Class 11 in December of 2013 and worked with Alumni and Development so that Express Scripts could be a host for the 2014 Olin Alumni Reception. He continues to be involved in the success of Olin Business School.

He exemplifies a Friend of Olin. Friends are those who are giving of their time, their knowledge, share their years of experience, open the doors of their companies to students and faculty, helping Olin build better leaders.

What has been one of your most valuable experiences at Olin Business School?
SM: I benefited from every experience provided by the EMBA program. Probably the one that stands out the most was HR and Organizational Development taught by the legendary former head of HR at Monsanto, Robert Berra. His pragmatic approach to managing and developing people continues to influence me daily. Companies are really about their people and he took it past the talk and taught you how to execute.

What is the most compelling thing your mentor has shared with/done for you?
SM: Early in my career, I had a mentor who taught me “equanimity” and “imperturbability.” This is the quality of being calm even in the most difficult of situations. As a physician, this is really important as it promotes clarity of thoughts and reassurance to patients, their loved ones and healthcare colleagues. It has proven equally important in business as it promotes top performance from our teams.

What are the 3 biggest challenges facing leaders today?
SM: The top challenge continues to be about people. Finding, hiring, developing and retaining top talent is mission critical for any organization. Second in my mind is dealing with change, especially the speed of change. Not everyone embraces change but it is inevitable. The third big challenge is regulatory burden. While most all regulations are well intended, there are always unintended consequences. Finding the right balance is very difficult.

What is the one behavior or trait you have seen impede leaders’ careers?
SM: It always has to be about the mission and not about the person. If you put the mission first, the leader usually benefits also. When it becomes about the leader first then both fail.

Tell us about a pivotal moment in your career.
SM: Without sounding too solicitous, getting my MBA was the pivotal moment in my career. Healthcare is somewhat of a cottage industry. Top leaders are often given positions because they were the best clinicians or scientists. Unfortunately, as the field grew into one of the largest segments of our economy, those skills alone were inadequate to manage. It has often contributed to the slow progress we have made in how we provide care in this country. Combining an MBA with my medical degree, clinical and research experiences has allowed me to make a much bigger impact.

What are you grateful for today? Why?
SM: I am the most fortunate person I know. I have a spectacular wife/best friend, three amazing kids, great friends and family, a wonderful career of purpose and good health. What more could anyone desire?

Who’s your favorite business speaker or author? Why?
SM: My favorite business author/speaker is Dr. Bob Lefton of Psychological Associates here in St. Louis. I teach his Q4 model to everyone who works for me. It provides a framework for communication and behaviors that really helps to create high performing teams.