Summer classes

This is the first post that will be straight from the horse's mouth. Tyler is bumming around India at the moment so I will be writing a few posts myself. As I do not have his flare for the fancy talk, this will be just the facts.

I thought I would say a few words about each of the summer classes that Tyler listed in the last post.

Operations management class has turned out to be my favorite. We have been studying process flows and capacity* and just today started an introduction to inventory management. While one typically would think of manufacturing, we are looking at service processes as well. The classes have been mostly case discussions which concerned me at first but have turned out to be enjoyable. (It is still a little weird to have someone putting a check mark beside my name every time I speak in class.) What I like most is that there are lots of opportunities for my classmates to discuss examples from their previous work experience. Since I did not come from manufacturing I am fascinated with some of the cool things they have worked on. We recently played the Beer Game - a supply chain game where you work on a team to produce and deliver beer each week as a way to look at inventory. While it was very fun, I was disappointed that there was no actual beer.

Probability and statistics is taught by two professors. The first professor is covering probability and next week is his last week. It hasn't been too challenging yet but I am told that the stats portion is more difficult. It will be my first exam though, so perhaps I shouldn't be too confident. There is no way the second prof is going to be as funny as the first.

High velocity organizations is the a class I am struggling with some. I expected a class on the tools of lean six sigma and this is not it. Instead the class is more about how to think about lean in a broader sense and how successful organizations have implemented lean. There haven't been any graded assignments yet so it all seems unclear.

Systems optimization started a little later than the rest of the classes so this is just the second week. Basically there are lots of word problems that have to be solved in Excel. Think what you will, but I love it.

Finally, there's leadership. The professor is terrific and the classes are interesting. There are case studies interspersed with video. If you are thinking that one can not teach leadership, we actually discussed that dilemma first. This class is a little intimidating because I don't get my grade for two years. I have to write a leadership plan this summer that details how I plan to develop and use my leadership skills during my graduate work and then at the end of the program (in two years!) I will be graded on how well I executed the plan. My first thought was no wonder the LGO program is so awesome. I mean if every student has to create a plan and implement something during their time here, of course the program is going to benefit. It's bloody brilliant.

So that is the summer core. And if Boston every figures out that this is summer and the sun comes out, all will be well in the world.

Classwork has picked up very quickly but this is a 4-day week because of Independence day so my long weekend begins tomorrow! Happy 4th!

*No post would be complete without a footnote. The law that describes a stable system says that the inventory in a system is equal to the flow rate times the time it spends in the system. This is known as Little's law for John Little who proved it in the 60's. John Little is a long-time professor at MIT Sloan. I heart MIT.