Earlier I posted about three of my classes this summer. Here’s the other two:
ESD.60 - Creating High Velocity Organizations (Lean/Six Sigma)
This class was taught by Steve Spear, who is an expert on Lean/Six Sigma concepts and has done a lot of work with hospitals and Toyota. He recently published his book that was our textbook, called Chasing the Rabbit. This class was really interesting for me, coming from the pharmaceutical industry, where the act implementing lean concepts is just a little different than other industries. We also had a few projects, including an in-depth interview with a front-line worker of our own selection. He was big on having everyone write short one-page blurbs on the reading assignments, then we could look at them after and reflect blatantly what we learned (even if it was a lot of work, it is an effective method). It was great to learn about lean/six sigma from Steve and the many great speakers we had this summer!
15.066 - System Optimization and Analysis for Manufacturing
This was our hardest content class of the summer, and it was great! It started out tough and got tougher. I completely learned the most in this class than any other class this summer, and it will really be valuable skills in the future. We did a lot of concepts involving computer optimization, modeling, simulation, network flow, and linear programming.
Our professor, Jeremie Gallien, was awesome too. He works with Zara, a clothing company and has transformed how they distribute fashion while decreasing product waste and increasing customer satisfaction. Here’s an article describing the project.
The course ended with each group doing a big project that solved a problem in industry, usually with a Boston-area company or a previous employer. Also, the projects were so intense that Excel wasn’t powerful enough to do them. We used an upgraded solver addition, and many other groups had to use other software entirely.
We did a project for my previous employer optimizing the matching of summer interns to projects, with the goal of making the interns as happy as possible to maximize potential for full-time hire. We used many sets of data and regression techniques to calculated a “happiness function” and determined the intern project pairing that optimized the collective happiness of the interns while utilizing the best available projects. It was very cool!
This was the class where I really confirmed that I’m here to learn and wasn’t going to not take a class that sounded interesting just ‘because it might be really hard’. I ended up with a good grade in Systems, but, I’m not here for grades, I’m here for learning, and I’ll learn a lot from a really interesting class that is hard and that I don’t have a lot of existing knowledge in the subject.
—————
In summary, the summer classes were awesome and most LGOs describe their summer as the best of the program. We had a summer of classes tailored to our operations interest and engineering background with our 47 new friends.
If you have any questions about LGO or my experiences as a student, please leave me comments. I look forward to hearing from you!
