An International Society to Extend and Integrate Knowledge Pertaining to Production and Operations Management

Third National Conference of the Operational Advantage Group

Posted in OAG

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THIRD NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE OPERATIONAL ADVANTAGE GROUP (OAG)
Saturday, April 29, 2006, 9:30 am to 5:15 pm

This year the OAG again conducted an all-day series of sessions that aimed to find ways to integrate the activities of POM practitioners with the academic interests of POMS members.

The theme of the morning session was:
What Is Keeping POM Executives Up At Night, And What Can POMS Do To Help?

As part of its goal of making POMS more relevant and useful to practitioners, the OAG has conducted an informal survey of industry executives between January and March of this year. The aim was to better understand the problems operations and supply chain management executives are facing today.
The first morning session started with a welcome to the Operational Advantage Group by Rafael Menda, Director of OAG, followed by a review of the survey results. A panel consisting of representatives from the industry then shared with the audience their own perspectives on the types of operational issues faced by their own companies.
Panel members were:
  • Peiling Wu, Senior Research Scientist, Manufacturing Systems Research Laboratory of General Motors Research and Development (R&D) Center.

  • Tony Lynch, Senior Consultant, Global Automotive Practice, A.T. Kearney, Inc.

  • Anand P. Raman, Senior Editor at the Harvard Business Review.

The second morning session featured a second group of panelists, this time from academia, who discussed their own experiences with working with the industry, and provided some suggestions for overcoming some of the barriers to good industry-academia collaboration.
The second group of panelists consisted of:

  • Harm-Jan Steenhuis, Assistant Professor of Operations Management, Eastern Washington University.

  • Steve Brown, Professor, School of Business and Economics, Exeter University (U.K.).

  • Kingshuk (KK) Sinha, Curtis L. Carlson Family Foundation Professor of Management Science, and Academic Director of Medical Industry Leadership Institute, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

The panel members and the audience also exchanged ideas on how to make POM research more accessible and attractive to practitioners and on other steps POM academics and POMS can take to raise the profile of our field in the eyes of practitioners.

The afternoon session was dedicated to the topic of:
The 'Disappearing' COO - Missing Link in Business Success

Organized by Prof. Joel Goldhar; this workshop included representatives from industry and academia and will explored both the apparent ‘disappearance’ of the COO and the evolving role of the COO (Chief Operating Officer) versus the proliferation of ‘C’ level positions. The group also discussed the characteristics of a successful COO and the contribution of the position to the competitiveness of an organization. Some of the questions explored in the workshop included: Is the COO title disappearing? Will the lack of the COO function lead to sub-optimization within SBUs? What are the primary tasks of the COO? What is the best experience for developing an effective COO? How does the role and responsibilities of the COO differ between manufacturing and service businesses and between small and large firms?

Rafael Menda’s presentation on the OAG survey results

For Tony Lynch’s presentation, please e-mail him at:
Anthony-Lynch@atkearney.com

For Peiling Wu’s presentation, please e-mail her at:
peiling.wu@gm.com

Anand Raman’s presentation notes are below:

Making OE Effective
Show me the money!

Making OE Operational
From Just-in-Case to Just-in-Time
  • Cluster

  • Web Site

  • Case Studies

  • Conference Calls

  • Blog (virtual cluster)

  • One on one Workshops

  • Surveys (Annual State of OE)

  • “Translations” of Academic Papers

  • Impact Document (Showing $avings)

Prof. Harm-Jan Steenhuis’s presentation

Prof. KK Sinha’s presentation

Notes from Prof. S. Brown’s comments:

  • Academia can be seen as a service to:

    • o Industry
    o Students
    o Ourselves
  • There is nothing wrong with writing books—books are what most practitioners read anyway

  • The way POM is taught in business schools favors quantitative analysis and lacks
    sufficient emphasis on strategy

  • CEOs’ average tenure is shortening, leading to more short-term decisions

  • VP of Operations title doesn’t always mean the same thing in different companies— many of those VPs don’t even have an operations background

    • Ideas, suggestions, and comments from the panel-audience discussions during the morning sessions:

    • Provide easy search access to published research (functional vs. industry)

    • There is a “language issue:” readability (by practitioners) of most academic papers is low—they can be “translated” to make them more readable

    • Why not inventory published POM articles by industry and collate with executive translation?

    • Forge partnerships with industry/trade associations and provide thought leadership

    • Commission ‘papers with relevance’

    • Identify “closet intellectuals” in companies and reach out to them

    • The return-on-investment for academics is the education of industry executives

    • Create a repository of “hot” research topics

    • Stay in-touch with students after they graduate

    • Establish personal relationships with practitioners—seek consulting opportunities

    • Join industry groups

    • Target top management in companies with ideas.

    • Practitioners may need help from academics in identifying and articulating the problem they are facing

    • Desire for “generalizability” by academics may be turning POM executives off (upon reading academic papers, they may be saying “that’s fine, but does it apply to me?”—they need specificity). Practitioners listen to their constituents but not always to academics

    • A lot of academics are doing research & publishing in academic journals on issues that are of little concern to practitioners

    • There has been a decline in POM articles in HBR

    • Academics can create clusters of non-competing companies within the region of their university and forge on-going relationships with them

    • The POM field still has the perception of being about OR

    • Many academics believe that “math” still matters, but it needs to be ‘translated’ for practitioners

    • The performance measures for academics and practitioners are still far apart

    • Are the academics targeting the right practitioners at the right organizational levels?

    • The finance and HR fields are more generalizable since they are more standardized in their processes—but POM is more specific

    Please return to this web page periodically to see the latest thinking on these subjects and other action plans we are undertaking to advance the mission of OAG. If you would like to participate in OAG’s activities, or have ideas and suggestions, please contact Rafael Menda at:
    rmenda@gmail.com