Happy 100th Birthday to IBM!

Reaching 100 years of age is remarkable for anyone, including a company, so congratulations are in order to IBM, which has reached its first century milestone as a company.

I can say that I grew up with IBM, having used IBM computers (yes, mainframes) as an undergraduate student at Brown University in Applied Mathematics, specializing in Operations Research, and also while a graduate student there. I spent a lot of time at the computing center since I so enjoyed solving those large-scale network problems.

After working in the high tech defense sector and getting my PhD, I was heavilty involved in supercomputing while an Assistant and then Associate Professor at UMass Amherst. I used the IBM supercomputer facility at Cornell, along with other centers at Illinois, and Pittsburgh, which were all then funded heavily by NSF (what a glorious time that was) and even got to serve on the National Allocations Committee at the Cornell Supercomputing facility.

IBM had an initiative at that time to feature one week workshops in Lech, Austria (and I had heard even in Monaco, but I did not get invited to those) and I was an invited speaker in two of them -- on Computational Economics and on Computational Finance. The speakers would get picked up at the Zurich airport and then driven through the Alps to this magical resort where we had not only views and amazing food but light brown cows with bells wandering around and waking us up in the early morning. We even got a chance to meet some top IBM executives. IBM no longer has such workshops, but perhaps the company will reinstitute them.

We all know about IBM PCs and have IBM to thank for them, as well, and, more recently, the great Watson supercomputer and its Jeopardy win.

IBM continues to innovate and to reinvent itself as a company, and is fcusing now on providing services and customer solutions, and I applaud it on its huge milestone. This article from USA Today has more on what reaching this milestone means.

Another reason that I am personally fond of IBM is because of its employees who are not only colleagues in one of my primary fields -- operations research and analytics, but who are also really terrific people.

Since we regularly host speakers through our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, we have had the pleasure of hearing from many IBM greats, including Dr. Brenda Dietrich, who is an IBM Fellow and the leader of its Business Analytics and Math Sciences research activities, and Dr. Robin Lougee-Heimer, as well as Dr. Grace Lin, formerly of IBM.

Jeff Immelt, C.E.O. of General Electric, Speaks Brilliantly on High Technology Manufacturing

Steve Lohr has a fantastic article in today's New York Times, in the Sunday Business section, on Jeff Immelt, the C.E.O. of General Electric (G.E.).

The article is a must read!

I have had several of my undergrad students go to work for G.E. and some of you may even recall that Jack Welch, Immelt's predecessor, received his undergrad degree from UMass Amherst.

The two and a half page article in the Times emphasizes Immelt's credo, that we must go back to making stuff and not just be focused on financial engineering but actually be producing products and especially high tech products as G.E. is doing from jet engines to medical equipment to locomotives (love it) to energy-related equipment, including power turbines, nuclear plants, and windmills. (Since I am a faculty member in the Department of Finance and Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, I can say that I cover "all bases!")

Immelt received an undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics from Dartmouth (one of my majors at Brown University as well) and went on to get his MBA from Harvard. He has always been really good with numbers. Would you believe that G.E is the biggest exporter in the U.S. after Boeing?

Immelt believes that technology-based manufacturing will reinvigorate the economy and he is putting his terrific vision into practice by creating thousands of new jobs.

I have my hardcopy of this article, with a half page photo of Immelt, and will show it to my students tomorrow. I am sure that they will be inspired by his vision and that high-tech manufacturing will be a growth industry and the skills needed to excel in this sector include knowledge of math, problem-solving skills, teamwork, and reading abilities.

Coincidentally, a week ago I had dinner with one of my former students, who is a Ford executive, and he told me that he had recently spoken with Immelt. I am looking forward to our next conversation at which I will certainly bring up Immelt and G.E.!