MLOG STUDENTS DEBUT RESEARCH TO CORPORATE PARTNERS

& ALUMNI

Thesis presentations kick-off three-day research and reunion festivities

In late May, students in the MLOG Class of 2007 presented their final thesis projects to an audience of more than 70 MLOG alumni, CTL corporate partners, and fellow 2007 classmates as part of MLOG Research Fest 2007.  The day-and-a-half-long event featured 22 presentations from all of this year’s MLOG graduates on topics ranging from S&OP processes to Promotion Planning to Fleet Scheduling to Product Segmentation & Portfolio Management. 

More than half of the research projects were sponsored by corporate partners of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, which runs the MLOG program.   The sixteen companies that sponsored projects included Procter & Gamble, CVS, Chiquita, Shell, Cardinal Healthcare, Cordis, Pfizer, Schwan’s, and more.   Representatives from a few of these sponsor companies attended Research Fest.

It was one of these sponsored projects that earned the event’s top prize.  Each year, one MLOG thesis project is selected to receive the MLOG Most Outstanding Thesis award.  Chosen by a board of CTL faculty and MLOG Alumni, this year’s winner was Shardul Phadnis, whose project – sponsored by Solutia – was entitled “Inventory Segmentation And Operational Policies For A Chemical Producer.”  Shardul’s thesis advisor was Professor Steve Graves of the Sloan School of Management.

Some MLOG Alumni also attended Research Fest, because it fell just before the CTL Reconnect Days, which is the annual reunion for all alumni from the MLOG and ZLOG programs.  Current and newly-admitted students are also invited to attend.  This year, Reconnect kicked off with a dinner at MIT’s new Stata Center with featured speaker Dr. Kristin Forbes, Associate Professor of International Management at Sloan, who served as a Member of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005.  The topic of her talk was “Globalization and China: The Facts and Fallacies.”

The following day, more than 70 alumni from all eight past MLOG classes took part in a day of professional development workshops; the focus of these sessions was on leadership – both in times of normal operations as well as during a crisis.  In the morning, alum took part in a Business Disruption Simulation, which challenged them to deal in real-time with a large-scale business disruption – specifically an avian flu outbreak.  The afternoon session was entitled the “Leadership Side of Supply Chain Management.”  In this session, Dr. Shalom Saar lead them through exercises to explore the various leadership skills needed to be successful in SCM roles. Dr. Saar is the senior fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University and the founder of Harvard's Center for Leadership Development. He also developed and teaches the MLOG Know Thyself Leadership Sessions.

Next year, CTL Reconnect will be part of a larger celebration to recognize the MLOG program’s 10-year anniversary.

To see more photos of the event click here.

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