From Supply Chain Optimization Summit in Seattle to ACEC in Boston to Big Book Launch in Chicago - What an October!

The new academic year is in full swing and it is a very special time of the year in New England with the fall foliage in its full splendor.

This month of October is jam-packed with so many exciting events that I am taking part in and am very much looking forward to.

Tomorrow (I turned down a trip to France), I will be teleconferencing in for a habilitation defense in France. I am on the candidate's habilitation committee, which required the reading of a professional dissertation, his book, and several papers of his. A habilitation is even higher than a PhD and several countries expect this achievement before one can supervise doctoral students and proceed higher on the academic ladder.

Thursday, the Isenberg School is hosting Marc Schneider, the CEO of the fashion house Kenneth Cole Productions. Marc is an Isenberg School alum and will be speaking to my Logistics and Transportation class. On Friday, my Operations and Management Department will be having its Advisory Board meeting and speed mentoring event. That afternoon I will also be taking part in a networking event organized by the Computational Social Science Institute (CSSI) at UMass Amherst that I am an affiliate of.

This weekend, I will be flying to Seattle, as an invited faculty participant of the First Amazon Supply Chain Optimization Summit. There will be about 30 faculty taking part in this 2-day summit from across the globe and we are even getting a tour of the fulfillment center, complete with Kiva robots.  The list of invited participants contains many well-known INFORMS members so it will be a nice small-scale reunion before our INFORMS conference in Philly at the end of the month.

Upon my return, I will teach my Logistics and Transportation class and then will be heading to Boston for the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) conference.  I am an invited speaker and will give the presentation, "The Application of Supernetworks to Critical Infrastructure from Transportation to Electric Power." This conference overlaps, in part, with the Head of the Charles regatta, for all the rowing fans out there!  Since my college room-mate at Brown University  was on the women's crew team and now my daughter is President of her college crew  and also the cox for two men's boats, I will have to check out the regatta. (And there is a chance that my daughter may be coxing an alum boat from her college).

The following week, I am flying to Chicago, where I have the great pleasure and honor of being one of three panelists at the big book launch of the Boyce and Williams book, which is a scholarly masterpiece: "Forecasting Urban Travel," published by Edward Elgar. This will be a truly celebratory event.

And the week afterwards,  colleagues, students, and I will be off to the INFORMS conference in Philadelphia.

Never a dull moment or day in academia!

Real Generals Talk Logistics and Winning in the Great Restructuring

There is an old military saying, which speaks volumes:

Armchair generals talk strategy. Real generals talk logistics.

Rich Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes magazine, recalls this saying in his outstanding column on Innovation Rules: Ten Tips: Restructuring Winners, in which he identifies what elements will help corporations in the great restructuring, which necessarily follows a great recession. Frankly, there is a lot of relevance in his excellent advice to other organizations, including universities. He identifies successful companies such as: FedEx, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, Apple, Genentech, SAS, and Oracle, which were started during the "rotten decade of the 1970s," during which IBM also managed to flourish.

What struck me about his ten tips for winning in the great restructuring, was that half of them I would classify under the heading of analytics, from his emphasis on identifying where costs can be reduced in your operations, to speeding up your deliveries, to providing leadership in service, as well as in design. But my favorite, was his statement:

PICK A LEADER IN ANY FIELD AND YOU'LL FIND SUPERB LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAINS UNDERNEATH. He singles out Wal-Mart and Amazon.com for their superior logistics.

As for the remainder of his tips, they round out what are fundamental to the success of corporations and organizations, alike. He advises to seek out the best talent, and quotes Bill Gates as stating that a great programmer is worth ten thousand times the price of only a good programmer. What really resonated with me, as well, was his emphasis on the importance of both internal and external communications (with IBM being a model for the latter and the military for the former). Excellent communications is one of my "pet peeves," and I wonder how much we have lost in the realization of the full potential of organizations because some of those "in command" did not provide the necessary information and did not get the important news disseminated.

Karlgaard ends by noting that integrity is essential and that everyone should know your purpose (see, it's about communication, here, too). I'll skip one of his tips -- branding, and will leave that to my marketing colleagues.

And, as for logistics, one of my undergrad students, who took my Transportation & Logistics class last term stopped by my office yesterday to seek advice because he wants a job in this industry, since logistics is his passion. I am sure that he will succeed.

If you wish to learn more about logistics and supply chains, please come to our Northeast Regional INFORMS conference at UMass Amherst, May 6-7, 2011. Information on a relevant tutorial at this conference is below.

Transforming U.S. Army Supply Chains: Management Innovation in DoD for Improved Efficiency, Productivity, and Cost-Effective Global Operations

Greg H. Parlier, Colonel, U.S. Army (retired)
Former Deputy Commander for Transformation, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command
President, INFORMS Military Applications Society.