OAG

Production Operations Management Society (POMS)

Interested in joining our group? Please contact Rafael Menda at rmenda@gmail.com

Rafael Menda
Director, POMS - Operational Advantage Group
McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals
rmenda@gmail.com

Bridging the gap between knowledge creation and knowledge application has generally been a challenge in many fields. Production and Operations Management (POM) is no exception. Typically the creation side has been seen as the domain of academics, leaving the consumption side to practitioners. But does the distinction have to be so pronounced? Many of us in POMS don’t think so, and we are taking some concrete steps in trying to bridge this gap between these two domains.

One of the past presidents of my company, during his first weeks with the organization, has once remarked: “The other day I walked into a room full of managers from marketing, sales, operations, finance, etc., and listened to the discussions for a while, and I couldn’t tell who was from which function. Right there I knew I had a great team working with me.” His point was that those in the room were all speaking “the same language”—the language of business—and not simply expressing their functional points of view. In a similar vein, my vision is that one day I will walk into a room full of POMS members at a future POMS conference, listen to an on-going discussion, and not be able to tell the academics from the practitioners. This is not to say that each constituent does not bring a unique perspective to such debates and contribute to the advancement of our field in a different way. It is just that those perspectives need not be so distinctly associated with either of those two constituencies. After all we share the overall goal of improving companies’ operational effectiveness while advancing the field of POM.

Naturally the best way of attaining this goal for us would be to gradually move POMS from being an exclusively academic association, towards a society that functions as a partnership among academia, industry, and government. It is within this context that we articulate the mission of the Operational Advantage Group as follows:
To achieve an inclusive organization, that brings together academics and practitioners, from many countries, who are devoted to furthering cooperation and interactions between the two groups. OAG members agree to coordinate activities to increase understanding and effectiveness of all aspects of operations management. OAG's purpose is to foster partnerships that include collaboration on research, consulting, teaching, and publishing. This goal is in conformance with the original conception of POMS.

The Beginnings

The initiative started as the Industry Support Group at the POMS conference in San Francisco, in April, 2002. The initial planning team consisted of Gabriel Bitran, Bob Hayes, Aleda Roth, Wick Skinner and Marty Starr. The initiative was approved by the POMS Board at Savannah, in April, 2003, and the group held its first session, as the OAG, in Cancun, Mexico in 2004. Attended by 60 POMS members, the session focused on the ways in which the activities of industrial executives can be integrated with the academic interests of POMS members. At that session, 50 people asked to be added to the OAG list, bringing the group total to 62—including four POM executives in various industries and about 15 academic consultants to industry.

Another all-day meeting was held at the annual conference in Chicago, in April, 2005. Highlights of the Chicago session included a panel on Collaborative Research, held by Andy Neely, Aleda Roth, and Chris Voss, and a workshop on the Role of the COO (Chief Operating Officer) organized by Joel Goldhar. 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 are the characteristics of an effective COO?

Currently the group list consists of 92 names, and it is growing gradually.

Moving Forward

Now we have to take these initiatives to a new level. If we are really serious about significantly increasing industry-academia collaboration, we need to find ways to reach out to the practitioners’ world. When we approach them, though, just stating OAG’s intent, its mission, and past activities will not be sufficient. Thinking from a typical “operations guy’s” point of view, there needs to be a “WIFM” (what’s-in-it-for-me?). Other than understanding the reasons for their absence from associations such as POMS, we have to articulate the benefits they would gain from collaborating with academia. To that end we plan to take on the following steps:

• Initiating individual contacts between POMS members and targeted practitioners in various industries, and creating a database of those potential “recruits,” categorized by industry and discipline expertise.
• Asking those practitioners for their pressing concerns (what is it that keeps them up at night?). This could take the form of a targeted survey, and once the responses are compiled and categorized, the outcomes can be used as a guide by faculty and doctoral students for initiating new research in areas where it is needed most. Participants in the first conference of the POMS Supply Chain College in Chicago this year compiled a list of possible research topics specifically in “Global Supply Chain Synchronization” and “Formulating and Executing a Supply Chain Strategy.” It was an excellent start—we will try to extend it to a broader POM agenda.
• Encouraging those practitioners who shared their pressing concerns with us to allow access to their companies and participate in collaborative research.
• Preparing a list of recent collaborative research by POMS academics; using this information to attract practitioners and maintain their interest. We can learn more from our colleagues in Europe and elsewhere in the world, where more institutionalized collaboration exists; e.g., the Advanced Institute of Management Research initiative in U.K., as presented by Andy Neely in Chicago this year.
• Inviting practitioners to fully participate in annual POMS conferences and mini OAG conferences that can be organized separately. This participation should go beyond singular presentations at panels and plenary sessions, and extend to papers presented in more varied venues (special tracks, etc.).
• Encouraging and helping them to co-author articles on the collaborative research undertaken.

All this may look ambitious, but we would like to have as many ideas as possible, which we can shape into a three-year plan in the coming months, and share with the membership in future POMS Chronicle articles and in Boston next year.

How Can The POMS Community Help?

We welcome any information that will help us pursue any of those six steps. Please contact one of us below if you want to get involved or have ideas to contribute. We are particularly interested in names and contact information of practitioners who may become potential participants.

We have a long way to go, but we have never been in a better position to take on this challenge.

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Rafael Menda (rmenda@gmail.com); Marty Starr (mstarr@cfl.rr.com); Sushil Gupta (poms@fiu.edu); Wick Skinner (wskinner@maine.edu)

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?