A day in the life

The only thing on the internet that I read religiously is Bill Simmons – The Sports Guy columns on ESPN. He frequently runs a minute by minute diary during major sporting events.

While I won’t bore you with that much detail I thought some people would find it helpful to know what a typical day in the LGO program is like so here you go:

July 29th, 2009

6:45AM – Finally get out of bed after hitting the snooze button five times.

6:50AM – Walk Charlie Murphy around my neighborhood, Porter Square in Cambridge. One of the reasons we chose to live here was because of the trees and grass that make it easier to have a dog.

7:00AM – Check my Littlefield plant. Littlefield is an internet simulation of a manufacturing plant. For Operations Management class, teams of three people make decisions in order to run a Littlefield manufacturing facility. We compete against other people in the class to maximize cash over a sped up 268 day period where every hour is one system day. It’s an interesting game and it can be addictive to see how much money you’re piling up.

7:25AM – Leave the house to walk to the T (Boston’s subway system). I’m lucky that I live only a 3 minute walk from the nearest subway station.

7:45AM – Arrive on campus for my first class of the day.

8:00AM – Check Littlefield again

8:05AM – My first class is Operations Management. Today we talk about various types of planning and scheduling techniques including MRP (Materials Resource Planning), JIT (Just in Time), ConWIP(Continuous Work in Process) and others.

9:25AM- First class ends. MIT operates on a time schedule so that classes start 5 minutes after the half hour or hour and end 5 minutes before the half hour or hour. This gives everyone a chance to get from one class to the next.

9:30AM – Check Littlefield again

9:35AM – Our next class Systems Optimization begins. Today’s topic is how to determine confidence intervals for the results of a simulation model. Fancy stuff.

10:55AM – End of Systems, time to check Littlefield again.

11:05AM – Probability and Statistics, the last class of the day, begins. We talk about the Taguchi method and analysis of residuals. One word, “Awesome”.

12:25PM – After Stats it’s time for lunch, and another chance to check Littlefield.

1:00PM – Today we have an LGO program town hall. We use these class meetings to review important information and update each other on the activities of smaller committee subgroups. Today one of my committees, the internship committee, is reviewing dates and events everyone needs to be aware of over the next several months.

2:05PM – My summer team reviews our Systems Optimization project with our professor and teaching assistant. One of the assignments for this class is to develop a solution to a real world operations problem using the tools we have learned in class. My team chose to create a mixed integer optimization model for the daily staffing process at a plant where I used to work. We built a spreadsheet and wrote a program in ILOG OPL software that determines the best method to place people into jobs based on their skills and the production needs of the day. Our model also has the “News Team, Assemble!!!” sound clip from Anchorman when you push the run button which we find hilarious and our French Professor doesn’t really understand.

2:30PM – Meeting with my summer team to plan out the last few weeks of the semester. We have a number of plant tours, final projects, homework assignments, and one final test to fit into the next twenty days.

3:00PM – I meet with a subset of my summer team to review a case for one of our classes on Friday. The case is based on an internet advertising company that is struggling to turn a profit during a time of rapid growth in the late 90’s. We diagram the business processes discussed in the case and try to come up with improvements.

5:00PM – I leave campus and jump on the subway to go home.

5:40PM- As sometimes happens in Boston the subway was having “service interruptions” so it took about an extra twenty minutes to get home. I try to take advantage of my time on the train by reading for classes. Due to the delay I was able to finish all of my reading for tomorrow.

5:45PM – Charlie Murphy and I take our afternoon walk.

6:00PM – Chillaxin

6:30PM – Kerin calls to say that the subway problems have slowed down her commute too so I start dinner. Tonight is pork chops from an awesome little grocery / meat market in Davis Square. One great thing about living in Boston is being able to walk to such a wide variety of cool little shops and restaurants.

7:15PM – Kerin and I eat dinner while watching Arrested Development. We never got into the show while it was on the air but lately we have been watching the old episodes and loving them.

8:00PM- We drive to a Target in nearby Watertown to pick up a few things. We brought a car (actually two) with us to Boston and it has been helpful once in awhile when we need to go to a store that’s not within walking distance. Watertown is about ten minutes away and has a Best Buy, a small mall, and a Target.

9:30PM – I forgot to mention, I checked Littlefield about 15 times between the last time I mentioned it and now. Tonight for homework I cover two cases that are due on Friday. One is a continuation of the internet advertising company that I started with my team earlier and the second is a medical supply company trying to improve their finished product distribution and warehousing strategy.

10:45PM – I’m done with homework for tonight. Time to watch some TV with Kerin and then read for awhile before bed.

The summer so far - classes

We’re almost done with our first semester on campus. I thought it might be helpful to describe the classes we take and some of the other academic related stuff associated with our first experiences in LGO.

All first year LGOs get to campus in early June to begin classes. The MBA students don’t show up until the Fall and there aren’t many classes during the summer for students in other programs so we have most of the campus to ourselves. We all take the same classes together so it’s a good opportunity to bond and get to know each other.

We take a total of six classes:

Building and Leading Effective Teams (the universe within) – this is the only class we take our first week on campus. It is meant to speed up the process of bonding, starting to build team skills, and our first exposure to the leadership curriculum.

Engineering Probability and Statistics – this class provides some tools for problem solving and working with data sets. It introduces the laws of probability and builds to statistical tools like linear regression.

Systems Optimization and Analysis – another class for analytical problem solving. This one focuses on optimization models like linear and integer programs.

Organizational Leadership and Change – in this class we focus on a variety of leadership topics including case studies of various leadership methods and styles.

Introduction to Operations Management – this class covers concepts like basic inventory theory, process metrics like utilization, flow time, capacity, and others.

High Velocity Organizations- this class used to be called “Lean / Six Sigma”. It provides an introduction to many of the tools and operations concepts of highly successful organizations.

Our summer curriculum also includes a number of speakers, outside the classroom activities, and group projects. We have class everyday but our schedule week to week varies. I will cover a typical day and week for this semester in a future post. It is certainly busy through the summer but it’s also a good reintroduction to college for those of us who have been working for the past number of years.

The introduction

To get us started, my first post will be answers to questions I think you’re likely to ask.

You: Why should I read this?

Me: You probably shouldn’t unless you fit a pretty specific profile. If you want to learn more about the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program from someone who’s currently enrolled, that’s a good start. If you think my particular perspective is relevant to your background, foreground, or middle ground, that’s good too. If you don’t know enough about me or the LGO program to answer those questions, then at least read the rest of this post.

You: What is the Leaders for Global Operations Program?

Me: If you somehow found this blog without knowing the answer to that question I recommend you check this page out for way more detail than I’m willing to type. If you prefer the short version it’s a partnership between industry and academia involving a number of companies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students who graduate from the two year program earn a Masters Degree in the engineering discipline of their choice, an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, and complete a six month internship with one of the partner companies.

You: Who are you and why are you writing this?

Me: I’m writing this blog because when I was deciding whether or not to apply to LGO the information in the student blogs was the best resource to help me make up my mind. Now that I’m in the program I would like to assist others in the same way. I also hope this blog becomes something to help me reflect on and remember my time in grad school for purely selfish reasons.

Now the who am I part. On the personal side I’m 29 years old. I’ve been married for almost five years to my wonderful wife Kerin who has been incredibly supportive and sacrificed a great deal so I could have the opportunity to join LGO. I have an older sister, a younger brother, and my parents live in Albuquerque, NM. I also have a dog named Charlie Murphy.

I grew up in Central New York near Syracuse, then moved to Rochester for college and have since lived in Vermont, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, California, and now Cambridge, Massachusetts. I enjoy traveling, hiking, photography, sports, and lots of other things in small doses.

I went to college the first time at the Rochester Institute of Technology (I have a thing for institutes of technology) and got a BS and an MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering. While in school I interned for five different companies in a variety of industries including automotive, semi-conductors, electronics, and industrial products. After college I worked for General Mills for six years in the Yoplait Division in jobs like Team Leader (shift supervisor), Startup Manager, and Program Manager.

You: Why did you choose LGO?

Me: That’s a long answer for another post, but for now I think it’s important to know that I spent about three years making up my mind before deciding to apply, and six weeks in I couldn’t be happier.

I’ll do my best to keep this blog useful and current. I plan on posting information and details that don’t show up in the brochures but are important parts of the LGO experience. I also take feedback well so email me if you have suggestions or specific questions I can help with.