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Stirring Up Excitement About Operations Management
The 50 students in Room 701 of the Moore School of Business are staring intently at their computer screens, working out statistical probability formulas as to how long it will take Builder X to construct a particular house for his client.
The formulas for this undergraduate Survey of Operations Management course, however, aren't meant to be memorized and then forgotten. Instead, they are as "real world" as the students' future jobs will be, the professor tells them.
"You can promise the world," says
Dr. Sanjay L. Ahire
, "but if you don't have the capability to deliver on your promises, your reputation and
your business will suffer. And that is what operations and supply chain management is all about."
Lured Away
Tall, slim, energetic, and bursting with enthusiasm, the 46-year-old Ahire has just completed his first year at the Moore School after being lured away from the University of Dayton, where, as a tenured full professor, he led the development of a much-praised undergraduate program in operations management (OM). The program was known for Ahire's ability to link his students with actual consulting projects in a wide range of manufacturing and service firms - projects usually done by MBA students, not undergraduates.
Dr. Manoj Malhotra, Jeff B. Bates Professor and chairman of the Management Science department at the Moore School, was instrumental in bringing Ahire to the University of South Carolina (USC). Malhotra is confident that Ahire will replicate his earlier success, this time south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
"Sanjay's presence will add considerably to our on-going efforts to design a cutting-edge curriculum and create a nationally ranked program," says Malhotra. He also believes Ahire will help grow the school's new Center for Global Supply Chain and Process Management, which was established in 2005.
Exciting things are happening already:
The Buzz
The reason for Malhotra's optimism is that operations management has become the hottest new major in many U.S. business schools today, and Moore School of Business has done particularly well in establishing a distinctive competency in this area over the past few years. In keeping with the school's international business reputation, the focus of the Moore School program is on developing strong research, teaching, and outreach reputation in global operations and supply chain management.
"This is a field that really makes or breaks industries and organizations," explains Ahire. Operations management - which helps businesses maintain the highest customer-service levels at the best cost-effectiveness - is increasingly crucial because of global competitiveness.
The pressures for doing more with less are felt by all companies - even the non-profits, says Ahire. The good ones "use operations management as a competitive advantage in terms of translating overall business and marketing strategies into real profits. It's the missing part of the puzzle in terms of sustained competitiveness."
More CEOs today understand, says Ahire, that "many of the things they actually have control over, in terms of determining their destiny, comes under the purview of managing and improving their operations and processes. Profits never fall from the sky. They are made on each and every core thing that you do as part of your business. And that core is operations."
Business students today who graduate with good operations management skills can write their own career ticket. "This is something they can actually take in their hand," says Ahire, "and tell the [prospective] employer, 'I know how to do it, and I have already done it for such-and-such company.' They need to say no more."
Ahire knows of what he speaks. Numerous former students landed top-notch jobs after gaining competency in operations management.
Take Ed Hayes, now 23, who studied with Ahire at the University of Dayton. "It was an amazing real-world experience," says Hayes, who is now a supply chain planner with United States Gypsum Corporation, a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago. "My senior project was with GE Aviation, working on long-term forecasting for airfoils." Hayes says he "definitely used the senior project and internship on my resume, and I am sure it helped me get a job."
Michael Sobieski, 25, now store systems coordinator for the giant clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, says having the "real-world experience" from Ahire's classes "really helped me establish some 'street credit' when I was interviewing for my job. The fact that I had basically been in a project management situation - managing time and resources, working through obstacles, was looked upon highly."
As their senior capstone project at Dayton, Sobieski and a teammate developed strategies to improve the network call center at the Miami Valley Hospital (one of the 100 largest hospitals in the country and ranked by U.S. News & World Report among "the best hospitals"). By the end of the project, "we increased the potential annual revenues generated from the call center by $1.2 million," he says. Best of all, the new system was actually implemented.
Then there is Sara Radigan, 24, who graduated from the University of Dayton in 2005 and, because of Ahire's enthusiasm and teaching style, says she found it hard "not to get excited about what I was learning in class." Now a material planner for a GE manufacturing shop in Greenville, South Carolina, Radigan knows several students who "received job offers out of the [Ahire] projects." (She already had a position lined up.)
One of her team's projects, with GE Aviation Distribution Center in Erlanger, Kentucky, helped the company improve its system of filling orders for parts through the OM strategy called lean six-sigma. The result? Happier customers.
Over a three-year period, Ahire's students in Dayton conducted more than two dozen consulting projects at companies such as General Motors, National Cash Register Corp., GE, United States Gypsum, Dayton Power & Light, and Fifth Third Bank. His students identified more than $19 million worth of savings for their companies, using such well-tested OM strategies as "lean six-sigma," "business process reengineering," and "supply chain optimization."
The beat goes on at USC. Last fall at MeadWestvaco's chemical division in Charleston, Ahire's IMBA and PMBA students used these kinds of strategies to analyze errors made during the process order confirmation step, says Jerry E. McDowell, operations system manager. "The intent was to examine the different types of mistakes made, train operators to understand the issues, set expectations, and monitor for sustainability. We went from a 40 percent error rate to single digit."
Adds McDowell: "We continue to take a similar approach in other areas in order to improve performance and productivity."
His goal for USC students, says Ahire, is to help them "make connections between everything they're learning here and how they can actually use it. I tell my students that these are not the things that you read in a book and forget. These are things that can make or break your career."
Growing Up in India
A native of Bombay, India, Ahire earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the University of Bombay in 1982. But his career as a chemical engineer was quickly derailed when he developed allergies to a number of chemicals.
Returning to the University of Bombay, he earned a master's degree in business in 1985, then came to the United States for a Ph.D. in management science at the University of Alabama.
While studying in Alabama, Ahire was hired as a research assistant at the Alabama Productivity Center, where he conducted analyses of production processes data from various companies in the state. His interest in operations management was born.
In 1992, with doctorate in hand, Ahire moved his wife Sneha and their daughter Swapnali (now 19 years old and a freshman at USC; the couple's son Megh was born in 1994) to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he accepted a position at Western Michigan University. Posts at Indiana University- South Bend and the University of Dayton followed.
These were successful, productive years for Ahire. He published widely in various top journals. (His 1996 article about Total Quality Management, published in the widely respected journal Decision Sciences, is now recognized as the second-most-cited article in that journal in the last 35 years.) He conducted research to identify linkages among various strategies and approaches to improve business operations and processes. And he put his teaching and research into practice through numerous applied research projects.
Ahire's teaching prowess and ability to link students with real-world consulting projects earned him several prestigious awards, including the 2002 Wickham Skinner Award for Teaching Innovation Achievements from the Production and Operations Management Society, the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Dayton, and the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award from the Southwestern Ohio Council on Higher Education.
In Dayton, Ahire formed an Operations Management Advisory Council, composed of executives from large and small companies in the Midwest. The council members became sounding boards for Ahire's applied projects and mentors to his students. Ahire personally recruited the president of Wendy's, the vice presidents from three leading divisions of GE, and many others to serve on the council.
"I didn't have any problem meeting with, and asking top-level managers and COOs, to join the Council," he says. "I always think that if you have passion and good ideas, people will listen, especially when they get a direct value out of these ideas."
At the Moore School
At the Moore School, Ahire is spreading the gospel about "hot careers" in operations management to undergraduate and graduate students alike. He is also trying to interest younger people, giving talks at local middle and high schools about careers in OM.
"Industry is starving for these competencies," he tells the students. It's a good career for women, too. About half his students at Dayton were female, and that percentage is holding true at USC.
Ahire puts forth other arguments as to why the Global Supply Chain Operations Management track (GSCOM) of the Management Science major at USC is a good choice: it gives people a niche that can't be readily outsourced, and it helps distinguish them from the rest of the crowd. "Today, USC grads are competing with fellow USC grads and graduates of the Ivy League or Big Ten schools," he says. "But I assure you that as they go into the future, they will also be competing with people from Bombay and people from China. And global companies will hire the best - no matter where they come from."
Business executives agree. Richard Wynne, director of strategic sourcing at Sonoco, says his company isn't a sponsor for Ahire's projects for purely altruistic reasons. "Being a sponsor is actually part of a larger strategy, with the overall mission of recruiting talented supply chain professionals from the Moore School of Business. Sponsoring projects is a great tool for Sonoco to evaluate future talent in the school while receiving business improvements and benefits from the project team recommendations."
In addition to Sonoco and MeadWestvaco, the Moore School's IMBA and PMBA students who took Ahire's Business Process Improvements course last fall worked at such companies as Michelin, Milliken & Co., Glaxo-Smith-Kline, and Kemet Electronics.
Vishal Khushalani, 30, who graduated in May with his IMBA degree, was one of those students. He loved the course. "I gained a good understanding of business improvement tools and techniques, a skill set which is most sought after in the job market," he says.
And one more thing, says Khushalani: "I am sure that no other course or business school helps students to get the prestigious Green Belt certification during their academic career.... I recommend every second-year IMBA student take this course, irrespective of their specialization."
The 50 students in Room 701 of the Moore School of Business are staring intently at their computer screens, working out statistical probability formulas as to how long it will take Builder X to construct a particular house for his client.
The formulas for this undergraduate Survey of Operations Management course, however, aren't meant to be memorized and then forgotten. Instead, they are as "real world" as the students' future jobs will be, the professor tells them.
"You can promise the world," says
Dr. Sanjay L. Ahire
, "but if you don't have the capability to deliver on your promises, your reputation and
your business will suffer. And that is what operations and supply chain management is all about."
Lured Away
Tall, slim, energetic, and bursting with enthusiasm, the 46-year-old Ahire has just completed his first year at the Moore School after being lured away from the University of Dayton, where, as a tenured full professor, he led the development of a much-praised undergraduate program in operations management (OM). The program was known for Ahire's ability to link his students with actual consulting projects in a wide range of manufacturing and service firms - projects usually done by MBA students, not undergraduates.
Dr. Manoj Malhotra, Jeff B. Bates Professor and chairman of the Management Science department at the Moore School, was instrumental in bringing Ahire to the University of South Carolina (USC). Malhotra is confident that Ahire will replicate his earlier success, this time south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
"Sanjay's presence will add considerably to our on-going efforts to design a cutting-edge curriculum and create a nationally ranked program," says Malhotra. He also believes Ahire will help grow the school's new Center for Global Supply Chain and Process Management, which was established in 2005.
Exciting things are happening already:
- International MBA (IMBA) and Professional MBA (PMBA) students conducted successful projects last fall at eight South Carolina companies, including Sonoco, the Hartsville, South Carolina-based global packaging company. Sonoco offered several of the students the opportunity to be certified as "Green Belts" - a prestigious certification based on the consulting projects they did for the company.
- An undergraduate research paper competition, sponsored by APICS, the industry association for OM professionals, was created last fall, and the first seven winners received their awards in February. A similar competition is planned for each semester.
- A Best Project Award is in the works to provide incentives to undergraduate students. So are scholarships for rising seniors at the Moore School who are OM majors.
The Buzz
The reason for Malhotra's optimism is that operations management has become the hottest new major in many U.S. business schools today, and Moore School of Business has done particularly well in establishing a distinctive competency in this area over the past few years. In keeping with the school's international business reputation, the focus of the Moore School program is on developing strong research, teaching, and outreach reputation in global operations and supply chain management.
"This is a field that really makes or breaks industries and organizations," explains Ahire. Operations management - which helps businesses maintain the highest customer-service levels at the best cost-effectiveness - is increasingly crucial because of global competitiveness.
The pressures for doing more with less are felt by all companies - even the non-profits, says Ahire. The good ones "use operations management as a competitive advantage in terms of translating overall business and marketing strategies into real profits. It's the missing part of the puzzle in terms of sustained competitiveness."
More CEOs today understand, says Ahire, that "many of the things they actually have control over, in terms of determining their destiny, comes under the purview of managing and improving their operations and processes. Profits never fall from the sky. They are made on each and every core thing that you do as part of your business. And that core is operations."
Business students today who graduate with good operations management skills can write their own career ticket. "This is something they can actually take in their hand," says Ahire, "and tell the [prospective] employer, 'I know how to do it, and I have already done it for such-and-such company.' They need to say no more."
Ahire knows of what he speaks. Numerous former students landed top-notch jobs after gaining competency in operations management.
Take Ed Hayes, now 23, who studied with Ahire at the University of Dayton. "It was an amazing real-world experience," says Hayes, who is now a supply chain planner with United States Gypsum Corporation, a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago. "My senior project was with GE Aviation, working on long-term forecasting for airfoils." Hayes says he "definitely used the senior project and internship on my resume, and I am sure it helped me get a job."
Michael Sobieski, 25, now store systems coordinator for the giant clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, says having the "real-world experience" from Ahire's classes "really helped me establish some 'street credit' when I was interviewing for my job. The fact that I had basically been in a project management situation - managing time and resources, working through obstacles, was looked upon highly."
As their senior capstone project at Dayton, Sobieski and a teammate developed strategies to improve the network call center at the Miami Valley Hospital (one of the 100 largest hospitals in the country and ranked by U.S. News & World Report among "the best hospitals"). By the end of the project, "we increased the potential annual revenues generated from the call center by $1.2 million," he says. Best of all, the new system was actually implemented.
Then there is Sara Radigan, 24, who graduated from the University of Dayton in 2005 and, because of Ahire's enthusiasm and teaching style, says she found it hard "not to get excited about what I was learning in class." Now a material planner for a GE manufacturing shop in Greenville, South Carolina, Radigan knows several students who "received job offers out of the [Ahire] projects." (She already had a position lined up.)
One of her team's projects, with GE Aviation Distribution Center in Erlanger, Kentucky, helped the company improve its system of filling orders for parts through the OM strategy called lean six-sigma. The result? Happier customers.
Over a three-year period, Ahire's students in Dayton conducted more than two dozen consulting projects at companies such as General Motors, National Cash Register Corp., GE, United States Gypsum, Dayton Power & Light, and Fifth Third Bank. His students identified more than $19 million worth of savings for their companies, using such well-tested OM strategies as "lean six-sigma," "business process reengineering," and "supply chain optimization."
The beat goes on at USC. Last fall at MeadWestvaco's chemical division in Charleston, Ahire's IMBA and PMBA students used these kinds of strategies to analyze errors made during the process order confirmation step, says Jerry E. McDowell, operations system manager. "The intent was to examine the different types of mistakes made, train operators to understand the issues, set expectations, and monitor for sustainability. We went from a 40 percent error rate to single digit."
Adds McDowell: "We continue to take a similar approach in other areas in order to improve performance and productivity."
His goal for USC students, says Ahire, is to help them "make connections between everything they're learning here and how they can actually use it. I tell my students that these are not the things that you read in a book and forget. These are things that can make or break your career."
Growing Up in India
A native of Bombay, India, Ahire earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the University of Bombay in 1982. But his career as a chemical engineer was quickly derailed when he developed allergies to a number of chemicals.
Returning to the University of Bombay, he earned a master's degree in business in 1985, then came to the United States for a Ph.D. in management science at the University of Alabama.
While studying in Alabama, Ahire was hired as a research assistant at the Alabama Productivity Center, where he conducted analyses of production processes data from various companies in the state. His interest in operations management was born.
In 1992, with doctorate in hand, Ahire moved his wife Sneha and their daughter Swapnali (now 19 years old and a freshman at USC; the couple's son Megh was born in 1994) to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he accepted a position at Western Michigan University. Posts at Indiana University- South Bend and the University of Dayton followed.
These were successful, productive years for Ahire. He published widely in various top journals. (His 1996 article about Total Quality Management, published in the widely respected journal Decision Sciences, is now recognized as the second-most-cited article in that journal in the last 35 years.) He conducted research to identify linkages among various strategies and approaches to improve business operations and processes. And he put his teaching and research into practice through numerous applied research projects.
Ahire's teaching prowess and ability to link students with real-world consulting projects earned him several prestigious awards, including the 2002 Wickham Skinner Award for Teaching Innovation Achievements from the Production and Operations Management Society, the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Dayton, and the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award from the Southwestern Ohio Council on Higher Education.
In Dayton, Ahire formed an Operations Management Advisory Council, composed of executives from large and small companies in the Midwest. The council members became sounding boards for Ahire's applied projects and mentors to his students. Ahire personally recruited the president of Wendy's, the vice presidents from three leading divisions of GE, and many others to serve on the council.
"I didn't have any problem meeting with, and asking top-level managers and COOs, to join the Council," he says. "I always think that if you have passion and good ideas, people will listen, especially when they get a direct value out of these ideas."
At the Moore School
At the Moore School, Ahire is spreading the gospel about "hot careers" in operations management to undergraduate and graduate students alike. He is also trying to interest younger people, giving talks at local middle and high schools about careers in OM.
"Industry is starving for these competencies," he tells the students. It's a good career for women, too. About half his students at Dayton were female, and that percentage is holding true at USC.
Ahire puts forth other arguments as to why the Global Supply Chain Operations Management track (GSCOM) of the Management Science major at USC is a good choice: it gives people a niche that can't be readily outsourced, and it helps distinguish them from the rest of the crowd. "Today, USC grads are competing with fellow USC grads and graduates of the Ivy League or Big Ten schools," he says. "But I assure you that as they go into the future, they will also be competing with people from Bombay and people from China. And global companies will hire the best - no matter where they come from."
Business executives agree. Richard Wynne, director of strategic sourcing at Sonoco, says his company isn't a sponsor for Ahire's projects for purely altruistic reasons. "Being a sponsor is actually part of a larger strategy, with the overall mission of recruiting talented supply chain professionals from the Moore School of Business. Sponsoring projects is a great tool for Sonoco to evaluate future talent in the school while receiving business improvements and benefits from the project team recommendations."
In addition to Sonoco and MeadWestvaco, the Moore School's IMBA and PMBA students who took Ahire's Business Process Improvements course last fall worked at such companies as Michelin, Milliken & Co., Glaxo-Smith-Kline, and Kemet Electronics.
Vishal Khushalani, 30, who graduated in May with his IMBA degree, was one of those students. He loved the course. "I gained a good understanding of business improvement tools and techniques, a skill set which is most sought after in the job market," he says.
And one more thing, says Khushalani: "I am sure that no other course or business school helps students to get the prestigious Green Belt certification during their academic career.... I recommend every second-year IMBA student take this course, irrespective of their specialization."
Jan Collins
April 2007
April 2007