Long period of inactivity...

Hey all,
I want to let you all know that I have not forgotten about this blog. The reason I am not writing many blog posts is because most of my time that is not related to school has been spent on recruiting. I have a whole blog-post regarding recruiting which I'll publish once I figure out where I'll be heading post-LGO. Other than recruiting I have been spending time on classes.

The four classes I am taking are listed below:

15.792J: Global Operations Leadership Seminar: Required course for LGOs. This course meets once a week for 1.5 hours and features a speaker from industry. We've had some very great speakers and some not so great speakers. I think it would help if some of these speakers were coached in the fundamentals of 15.280 (our communications class at Sloan). I've seen some speakers use powerpoints and just read from them... I've also seen some awesome speakers with some amazing stories to tell about their time in industry.

15.818: Pricing: I am not technically taking this course as I am a Teaching Assistant (TA for short) for the course. This has been an eye-opening course in learning how products are priced. The Professor, Catherine Tucker, is great and I am having a great time learning and TA'ing the course. I highly recommend this to Sloanies/LGOs who have the opportunity to take it in the Fall.

15.769: Operations Strategy: Another required course for LGOs. I took this course in the Fall versus the Spring because Professor Don Rosenfeld and Professor Zeynop Ton are teaching it in the Fall. I think in the Spring the Professors will not be as good. This course is a great overview of many operational concerns for companies ranging from IT, workforce management, supply chain, and process improvements. We've had some excellent guest speakers from Toyota, Flextronics, and other companies.

15.013: Industrial Economics: This course came highly recommended from the previous LGO class. I am enjoying learning more about how economics impacts industrial companies. We recently covered how network effects impact how new standards are formed from CDs, DVDs, and video game systems. One principle that this course has taught me is that companies with high fixed costs, very low marginal costs (think internet providers), and competitors lead to vicious price competition. This is very helpful in understanding why companies like Boeing and Airbus struggle so much in regards to pricing their airplanes. They have to keep their production lines running and generally sell their airplanes near marginal costs.

ESD.341J: Engineering and Architecting Software Systems: This is my one engineering course for this semester. It covers various software topics like cloud computing, online security, and internet insurance. This course has been very helpful in evaluating various recruiting opportunities as I am investigating opportunities in the tech industry. The final project consists of a 10 minute video. My partner and I decided to make our video about the Electronic Sports industry. I did not realize HOW large and fast growing this industry is. If you have no idea what I am talking about, take a look at League of Legends and the number of people that play that game.

I did not think recruiting would take so much time, but the time it takes to apply, research (online and through phone calls with alumni at those companies), interview (on campus, phone, and on-site), and consider has been a lot more than I thought it would be.

Back to blogging and Cambridge!

Hi blogging fans!

It has been a long time since my last blog post. Last week my wife, two boys, and I arrived back in Cambridge. We moved into a new place just a block away from our old place, and we are mostly settled in now. Our friends from church graciously volunteered to supervise our movers move our belongings in storage to our new place. So when we arrived all we had to do was unpack!

I don't have too many excuses for not blogging during the internship, but the primary excuse is that I did not know how much of my internship I could share with you all. At a high level my internship was evaluating different inventory strategies to increase the profitability of Nike's seasonal products (like fleece and sandals). Very interesting internship and I look forward to writing up my results as part of my thesis. I feel very blessed to have been at Nike with a great supervisor (thanks Ben!) who is an alumni of MIT (graduate of the SCM program). I also had a great project mentor (thanks Hugo) who went to Stanford for a PhD in Operations. Without Ben and Hugo I would not have been able to finish my project. Overall, I had a great time at Nike! Apart from work, Nike hosts an amazing internship summer class with outings and special talks by Nike senior leadership.Also, playing Ultimate Frisbee once or twice a week was great experience.

Now that I am back in Cambridge, I am slowly transitioning my mind-set back to being in graduate school. I have been receiving a deluge (well more like a few a day) of emails requesting updates and additions to the class I am TA'ing (Pricing). The Professor and course content are held in very high regard so there is high demand for the course (over 50 on the wait-list for the first section alone!). This semester I am taking:

• Industrial Economics: Another course with a long wait-list. Good thing I bid correctly and got in the first try.
• Operations Strategy: Required course for LGOs. Taught by Don and Ton this semester (I think this is the last semester Don Rosenfield will teach).
• Architecting and Engineering Software Systems: One of the courses I need to take for my ESD MS.
• Global Operations Leadership Seminar: LGOs are required to take this course two semesters.
• Pricing: I am the TA for the 10am section!

In addition to class I am an officer in the Sloan Christian Fellowship (SCF) and still a member of the Tech Club (but no longer an officer). I think I'll have to spend a lot of time on my thesis this semester because I don't want to be finishing it during winter break. Also, I have to reserve some time for recruiting this semester. Sounds like a busy semester, but I hope to balance my time so I can stick to my exercise routine. Also, I hope to have some family time as well! Seems like a lot, but hopefully it will work out. 

John

Internship at Nike!

Hey all,
Wow, it has been a while since I have last written! Whew. Since Domestic plant trek a lot has happened:

• Family and I moved to Oregon.
• Experienced a huge snow storm in Oregon (shoveling snow... I thought I was done with that when I left Boston! haha).
• Started working at Nike.
• International Plant Trek.

I don't really have much of an excuse for not writing any new posts, except that I am not sure how much I can write about my Nike work on this blog. At Nike I am working on a supply chain project to optimize inventory management for Nike's replenishment business. The principles I learned in Operations Management and Logistics Systems have been invaluable for this project. I thought managing inventory would be easy prior to LGO, but I have since learned how difficult it actually is! If you have too much you are left with excess inventory and if you have too little you lose sales! 

Nike so far has been an amazing experience. The campus is beautiful and the collaborative work culture is refreshing. Work really has be socialized with most groups that would be affected, so what ends up happening is that there are all sorts of meetings you have to attend or schedule. Nike also has a great gym (what else would you expect from a sports company) with all sorts of classes and pick-up games. I'm playing ultimate frisbee (I am one of the worst players, but that is ok!) and attending some pilates classes. In addition, I've started to bike to work (only 6.5 miles one way to work) as well so I have started to get back into shape. 

The reason I have time to write this post is because I am sitting in Portland's airport waiting to catch a flight to Boston. What is funny is that I actually paid $75 yesterday morning to get an earlier flight. What ended up happening this morning was that my flight actually was delayed so I would miss my connection (in Denver) to Boston. So now I am arriving later into Boston and out $75. I hope United Airlines refunds me that amount, but we'll see what happens. I'm just glad that I am arriving in Boston at all now... The reason I'm going to Boston is for LGO's Midstream review where I share what I have been working on at Nike to my classmates.

Domestic Plant Trek: Day 10-13 Raytheon, Dell, and Amgen

Hey all,
This is going to be my last post about the domestic plant trek. Sorry about the lack of photos, but the last half of plant trek was a bit of a blur! Below is a summary of our whirlwind of visits the second week of plant trek.

Monday: After the Amazon distribution center visit, we all rode on a bus to Raytheon in Tucson, AZ. We were on the bus for approximately 7 hours and arrived near midnight in AZ.

Tuesday: Visited Raytheon in Tucson. International students were not allowed on this site visit because the products that they manufactured were for defense applications. After the visit to Raytheon we flew to Austin, TX to visit Dell. Most of us went into Austin for dinner. A few of us went to Stubbs and enjoyed some famous TX BBQ!

Dinner at Stubbs in Austin

Wednesday: Dell executives all the way from Michael Dell (whoa!), Jeff Clarke, and others spoke to us at Dell. This was by the far the most top heavy of LGO visits. Dell seems to have some great plans in place for revitalizing their company post-privatization.

Thursday: Travel day to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the evening Amgen hosted us for an appetizer reception.

Friday: Visit Amgen's manufacturing facilities in San Juan! The plant where they bottled, labeled, and shipped off their biologics was very impressive.

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.