Individual Report:
Chwen Sheu, PhD (Kansas
State University)
This
report documents the activities, including attending meetings and participating
in various projects, I of which have participated as a Welliver Faculty Fellow
during the summer of 2003. Based on the
experience gained from those activities, I will then present my future plans
for upgrading my teaching and research.
Specific suggestions and recommendations in relation to supplier
management are also prepared.
My
assignment for Summer 2003 consisted of meetings,
interviews, providing training, and conducting projects.
(1)
Projects
I
worked with four managers on the following projects:
(a) SM&Q Virtual Team Assessment
& Recommendations (Sponsor: John Bishop, AFS/IDS)
(b) Risk-Based Business Model
(Sponsors: Preston Thompson, SQ&D/IDS)
(c) IDS SM&P Strategic Plan
Development (Sponsor, Stan Albrecht,
BPM/IDS)
(d) Value of High Supplier
Performance (Sponsor:
Bob Juergens, IDS)
(2)
Meetings
I
attended the following meetings
(a) Weekly SM&Q staff
meeting
(b) SMC monthly meeting (1 day)
(c) SMPC monthly meeting (2
days)
(d) Several site review meetings
(3)
Interviews/Site visits
I
interviewed the following employees for various issues
(a) PSD (Puget Sound) – Lean manufacturing
applications
(b) PSD (Puget Sound) – ERP Implementations
(c) SQ&D (Puget Sound) – University education and
employee development
(d) IDS/C-17 (Long Beach) – University education and
employee development
(4)
Training
I
provided a four-hour Theory of Constraints (TOC) seminar to a group of
engineers at IDS C-17 facility.
All those activities provided me opportunities to
talk to Boeing employees and to review various management issues ranging from
operational level to strategic levels.
Accordingly, I developed the following future plan to utilize the
experience gained from this fellowship.
2.
Future Plan
At Kansas State University, I am the Coordinator of
Operations Management track and the Chair of Graduate Studies in the College of Business Administration. I plan to use this fellowship experience to
make the following curricular and individual teaching upgrades.
A. Teaching Upgrade (Curricular and Individual
Teaching)
(1) I plan to add the
“communication” component to all Operations Management electives. Most of students taking those electives are
majoring in operations management. After
seeing how important communication is in industry, I have no doubt that we need
to emphasize on this issue more.
Actions: Meet with all OM faculty and discuss the
need of this change; Make the change
Time line: Fall 2003 – Spring 2004
(2) I plan to suggest to the
College Curriculum Committee designing multi-disciplinary courses. Most projects at Boeing require knowledge
from different disciplines. It is important
that students have an integrated view of business organizations.
Actions: Meet
with the committee and propose new courses or changes to current courses; Make
the change
Time line: Fall
2003 – Fall 2004
(3) I plan to redesign MANGT 653 – Project Management
course by increasing the coverage of risk management and progress review. Almost every Boeing meeting I attended,
mangers are using those tools.
Action: Revise
the course outline and content of my own project management course
Time line: Fall
2003
(4) I plan to add the “teamwork”
component to my own personal teaching agenda, and hopefully include this issue
in all OM electives. Many courses in my college assign students
group projects and homework but no guidance is provided to help them address
various group problems.
Actions: Study
teamwork related issues and techniques; Revise the course outline and content
of my own courses, Meet with all OM faculty to implement the change
Time line: Spring
2004 – Spring 2005
(5) I plan to use Boeing examples
to enhance my teaching in lean manufacturing.
I visited PSD during the fellowship and was able to learn about the
process and various tools of lean manufacturing. All Boeing examples will be
discussed without violating the NDA.
Actions: Work
with Boeing managers to prepare and publish the Boeing Lean Manufacturing
practices; Revise course outline and content of my own operations management
course;
Time line: Fall
2003 - Spring 2004
(6) I plan to enhance MANGT 652
– Supply Chain Management course with this fellowship experience. During the fellowship, I attended various
supplier management meetings and had the opportunity to observe the current
Boeing supplier management practices. This knowledge and experience will
definitely improve my teaching in supply chain management.
Actions: Meet
with another OM faculty to review and revise the course outline and content
Time line: Spring
2004
(7) I plan to invite Boeing
managers to speak in various OM courses. I
have spoken to several Boeing managers about this issue and they all expressed
a great amount of interest in visiting Kansas State University as guest speakers.
Action: Coordinate
with all Management faculty this opportunity and arrange the visits
Time line: Start
in Spring 2004 and continue into the future
(8) I plan to present my Boeing
experience to my College upon my return.
I have continuously updated the progress of this fellowship to my Dean
and Department Head. Both have requested
I make presentations of my experience to my colleagues and College Advisory
Board. The purposes of the presentations
are to discuss the need of making various curricular changes and discussing
continuous collaboration with Boeing in improving our undergraduate education.
Action: Meet
with the Dean and Department Head to schedule my presentations
Time line: Fall
2003
B. Research Collaboration & Publication
Research helps me study and learn various
subjects in management, which in turn improves my teaching. For those projects that I conducted during my
fellowship, I plan to either continue working on them with the Boeing managers
or publish the project results.
(1) Research publication
· Lean
manufacturing applications in Boeing, with Robert Thayer, PSD
Time line: Fall 2003 – Spring
2004
Target Journal: Production
& Inventory Management Journal, published by APICS.
· Virtual
communications – A case study, with John Bishop,
AFS/IDF
Time line: Spring 2004
Target Journal: Production
& Inventory Management Journal, published by APICS.
(2) Research project collaboration
· Risk-Based Business Model, with Preston Thompson, SQ&D/IDS
· Value of High Supplier Performance, with Bob Juergens, IDS
B. Suggestions & Recommendations
(1)
Benchmarking and
supplier management research are insufficient.
Best practice is often mentioned as one of the
strategic goals, while very little benchmarking of other industries has been
done.
(2)
“Fire-fighting” mentality
(a) Managers are occupied
with fire fighting activities with little time for planning or important
projects.
(b) Managers are pleased with
putting off fire but little effort was made to investigate the root causes. How
do they ensure that the same mistakes would not be repeated?
(3)
Internal communication has room for improvement
(a) People from different
business units have different definitions and interpretations for the same
thing, such as supplier management.
(b) People are not aware of
using existing knowledge base and repeat the same activities previously
performed by people in the other part of the company.
(4)
Supplier Management related issues
To be discussed with Mr.
William Stowers, Vice President, Supplier Management.
(with
J. Bishop, Air Force, Long Beach, Boeing, 2003)
