Domestic Plant Trek: Day 5-9 Amazon Dinner

Hey all,
Quick blog post about the last few days:

Day 5: Drove to Seattle from Portland. While in Seattle we ate at Tamarind Tree, great Vietnamese food by the way, and visited Pike Place. Afterwards we had a dinner with Amazon.

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Lunch at Tamarind Tree

Pike Place Starbucks 

Day 6: We visited two Boeing facilities (Everett and Renton). 

Boeing future of flight museum. 

 Day 7: Day off in Seattle. Hung out with my friend Bryan from graduate school.

Day 8: Flight to LA from Seattle. A few of us spent some time with Josh's family in LA. Thanks Josh's family for the hospitality! We ate very good Korean and Japanese food in Orange County.

Eating lunch at Shik Do Rak

 Day 9: We had a great time visiting Amazon in LA.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 4 Nike!

Hey all,
The end of day 3 was nice because we had the fortune of being allowed to access the Nike employee store! I bought a few gifts and some new running shoes (the Nike free Hyperfeel). I spent the rest of the evening with my parents.

Day 4 was a heavy dose of Nike in general and Nike supply chain in particular. We arrived at Nike around 8am and received free Nike shirts (see me wearing mine in the below pictures). Our first formal event was a talk by two Nike VPs of Manufacturing/Sourcing. It is amazing to learn about the challenges that Nike faces as it continuously innovates on its product and manufactures its products in Asia. Afterwards, we had a talk by Nikhil who some of us met when he interviewed us a few months back. He spoke about his role as a Nike Supply Chain strategy Director.

In the late morning we went on a tour of the Nike campus. What an amazing (and LARGE) campus! Very well laid out buildings and art strewn about the area.

We closed out our Nike portion of the day with a visit to their IHM facility (in house manufacturing) which manufactures airbags for Nike shoes.

Army and Navy jerseys!

Hey

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 3 Travel to Portland

Hey all,
We passed an uneventful night in the Marriott downtown. We are all now awaiting our flight from DTW (Detroit) - DEN (Denver) - PDX (Portland). We are glad that as of 9:55am no delays/cancellations are reported for our flights! So far so good.

One thing I was not prepared for was the weather here in Detroit. It is -10F! Feels like -35! Wow... I went outside to get into the mini-van and I felt like a blast of cold hit me in the face! 

Below are some pictures of us waiting for our flight at DTW.

Domestic Plant Trek: Days 1-2 Driving to Detroit

Hey all,

If you do not know, all LGOs are required to attend the Domestic Plant Trek, a two week trip in between the fall and spring semester. We fly (and drive) around the country visiting various partner company manufacturing facilities and headquarters. I'll try to keep my blog updated with what happens during plant trek so that I can keep a record and let you all know what is happening.

Day 1 (January 5th)! The original plan was to fly from BOS-BWI (Baltimore)-DTW (Detroit) to visit GM. We were set to leave 1pm, so I got to the airport a little early at 10am. While in the bus heading to the airport David lets me know what our flight from BWI to DTW has been cancelled so we should stay home until more contingency plans are made. I was already there so I stayed and helped out our fearless Scott figure out how to re-route our Southwest Airlines tickets to either Detroit, Denver, or Portland. Detroit would be nice, but we were planning on heading to Denver (our connection to Portland) or straight to Portland (where our next stop was Nike!). The earliest we could get out to PDX (Portland) was Wednesday morning, so that was unacceptable.

With my head hung low, I returned home thinking that we were going to miss GM AND Nike.. Little did I know that later in the afternoon our domestic plant trek committee decided to rent mini-vans and have us all DRIVE to Detroit! That sounds like a desperate plan, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So about 40 of us met at BOS to rent mini-vans. I rode along with Xiaodi, Raf, Ellen, and Willow in the Van Guard! We drove all night from 5pm to about 9am this morning. During the way we encountered some treacherous weather (thanks Raf and Ellen for driving through most of it!), but we eventually made it safe to Detroit. 

Raf and Willow were considering heading to the second GM plant in the afternoon, but the rest of us were too tired to head out. After breakfast I slept for 3 hours and feel immeasurably better. Most of us have missed GM's plant tours, but we do get to have dinner with some GM executives tonight. 

UPDATE (7 January 2014): We actually did not make the dinner at the Heritage Center with GM executives, but we did have dinner with ourselves in the hotel! 

Driving to Detroit!

More driving to Detroit

Another picture of our drive

Breakfast at the GM center after we arrived into Detroit

Picture taken from the food court at the GM Renaissance Center. This was our celebratory breakfast meal. 

Thanks to Ellen for taking these shots during the drive. 

Eating at Andiamo's in the GM Renaissance Center (GM HQ and where our hotel was)

Off-cycle internship results-Nike!

Hey all,
We recently found out that 13 of us have been matched to off-cycle internships! I'll be heading to Nike with two other LGOs in February. Woo hoo! The family is excited for the move. My parents are excited to have the grand-kids nearby as well.

Leaving after only two semesters at MIT is fast, but it is nice to have a whole year back at MIT after the internship. It is difficult to leave my friends in my cohort (go Indians!), core team, and LGO cohort, but that is balanced out by getting matched to the company/project of my choice. I'm very grateful to be given this opportunity by LGO and Nike, and I hope I do well!
John

Off-Cycle internship recruiting!

Hey all,
We just finished up our off-cycle internship recruiting (http://lgo.mit.edu/manufacturing-operations-mba-internships/) last week. This means that the group of us who recruited for off-cycle internships will start our internships in February of 2014 (ending in August). People have various reasons for choosing to interview for off-cycle internships:

• Location: Some of us are trying to go (or stay in Boston) to specific places for our internship. For instance, a lot of those with significant others (SO) that work in Boston would like to stay in Boston for their internship because moving for six months would be disruptive for their SO. 
• Company: A few of us are targeting certain companies for internships because they would like to work their post-MBA (or at least would like to try it out). 
• Timing: Some of my classmates have specific timing concerns because of classes or conferences. For instance, a few of my classmates opted out of recruiting for off-cycle internships because they want to take part in some conferences this February (I think the tech conference and sports analytics conference are both in February). 
• Internship content: I think a few of us were motivated by the specific problem statement in the various internships. 

The internship recruiting cycle was supposed to be from the 21st of October to the 1st of November, but some of the interviews have spilled over into this week (due to some company scheduling issues). LGO only allows up to 15 (at least this year) of us to go on off-cycle internships, so a few of us will be disappointed by the matching of internships to students. If you all do not know, internships are matched to students similarly to the Medical Student residency match. Students rank the preference of their internships and companies do as well. The internships are then matched to optimize happiness of the student and company. 

We should know whether or not we are matched at the end of this week. The match for off-cycle internships is faster than for on-cycle because a smaller number of us apply to off-cycle, and students are a lot more exclusive about which internships they apply to (so the match is less complex). The reason we are more exclusive is because if we do not match this cycle, we always have the on-cycle internship to try again. 

This year we had a great selection of internships from our partner companies (http://lgo.mit.edu/partner-companies/partners/). Amazon, Amgen, Beth Israel (Boston area hospital), Boeing, Mass. General Hospital, Nike, Pfizer, Sanofi, UTC-Sikorsky, and Verizon all offered internships for off-cycle internships. I am in the Engineering Systems Division (ESD), so most of the internships worked for me (a few of the biotech companies strongly prefer Chemical Engineers). Depending on the engineering department, students had a smaller list of companies they could recruit for because the internship forms the basis of our thesis. This thesis is a requirement for graduation so our engineering department must approve the internship to ensure it has enough appropriate engineering content for an engineering professor in that department to sign off on. It seems like the most lenient engineering department in terms of engineering content is ESD because it is, arguably, the most inter-disciplinary engineering department that LGO partners with. 

If I match I'll be pretty excited about the internship, but a bit sad at leaving Boston. Also, the thought of moving so soon is daunting. If I don't match, my wife and I will be happy to have some more time in Boston before possibly moving in June. I'll keep you all posted on the results!

MIT LGO Ambassador Day November 4th!

Hey prospective LGOs!
Ambassador Day is coming up November 4th and we would like to see you there! I went last year and that trip was instrumental in my selecting LGO over other MBA programs that I was considering. I had a chance to meet a handful of my current classmates and a few of the LGO '14s as well. See the link below to watch a video that a few of my classmates put together to advertise the event.

http://lgo.mit.edu/news/articles/ambassador_day_2013/ambassador_day_2013.html

Schedule of the day is below:

Ambassador Day Schedule (November 4, 2013)
10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.

By sitting in on a class, having lunch with current LGO students and admissions staff, or participating in a student-run panel discussion, you'll have an LGO experience that's both informative and interactive.

9:30–10:30 a.m.		Check in and mingle in the Sloan building (Room E62-233)
10:30 a.m.–noon		Tour the MIT campus with current LGO students
Noon–1 p.m.		Engage in an LGO student panel discussion
1–2:15 p.m.		Enjoy lunch and mingling with LGO students and staff members
2:30–4 p.m.		Attend a class (engineering or business)
4–5:30 p.m.		Attend a partner company proseminar