Investing in our Success

Vol 7. Issue 2 Clarkson s Global Supply Chain Management Program has been ranked as a top 20 program in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 12 consecutive years. Investing in our Success For the last 12 years, Clarkson s Global Supply Chain Management program has had the distinction of being singled out by U.S. News & World Report as one of the top supply chain management programs in the nation. Clarkson s inclusion alongside other elite universities is a testament by our peers of the quality of our program and faculty. It would be easy to be satisfied with this achievement. But in the spirit of continuous improvement, we review and revise our interdisciplinary curriculum to align with evolving opportunities and challenges in the field from increased global competition to the availability of better information systems and the emergence of customization to deal with supply and demand variability. Many of our new ideas come as a result of our engagement with supply chain leaders across the nation through our annual Executive Seminar in Global Supply Chain Management. For example, while we have always included logistics-related topics in our courses, we recently developed a standalone Logistics Management course based on corporate feedback. With this comes a new faculty line in logistics for which we are currently conducting a national search. In addition, in response to corporate interest in a supply chain management graduate program, our faculty is developing an online Master of Science program in Supply Chain Management for working professionals that builds on our successful online MBA program. In this issue of Linkages, you can read about our ongoing commitment to the field. From the global reach of our faculty through research and teaching (p. 2) and Associate Professor Santosh Mahapatra s research in supplier relations in luxury vehicle manufacturing in Italy and the handloom industry in India (p. 6), to an interview with School of Business Dean Dayle M. Smith on the University s commitment to Global Supply Chain Management (p. 7). At the center of our educational model, an emphasis on experiential learning and leadership development creates opportunities for our students to pursue co-ops and internships at leading corporations, including DuPont, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, National Grid, Raytheon, Timberland and Xerox (p. 4). It is no surprise that Clarkson ranked #1 in internships in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 2013. We hope you enjoy this issue and, as always, we welcome your feedback. (mahmoodi@clarkson.edu) Professor Farzad Mahmoodi Joel Goldschein 57 Endowed Chair in Global Supply Chain Management and director of Clarkson s GSCM Program

P a g e 2 Associate Professor Weiling Ke TGlobal Reach Clarkson Faculty Focus on Supply Chain Management in their Teaching and Research Abroad. The global engagement of Clarkson School of Business faculty through international research and teaching has multiple impacts. For the students they teach, their broadened perspective enhances cultural sensitivity in the classroom and provides a global context to the courses they teach. Through partnerships with overseas researchers and educators, they contribute to a deeper understanding of differing cultural norms and supply chain management practices in different parts of the world. Over the last several years, Associate Professor of Operations & Information Systems Weiling Ke and research collaborators from the City University of Hong Kong and the University of Science and Technology of China have been engaged in ongoing research projects related to inter-organizational knowledge sharing and open innovations, ERP implementation, e-commerce and e-learning systems. Their research has been supported by governmental agencies such as the National Science Foundation of China and the General Research Fund sponsored by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and published in leading journals, including the Journal of Operations Management, the Journal of Management Information Systems, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Decision Support Systems. Last year, Prof. Ke and her research colleagues published Effects of supply chain integration and market orientation on firm performance: Evidence from China in the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, based on their investigation of the impact of different dimensions of supply chain integration on two aspects of firm performance in China s emerging economy. Prof. Ke is also working with her colleague Prof. Augustine Lado at the School of Business to understand how supply chain networks can facilitate entrepreneurship in developing economies like China. Professor Augustine Lado, the Richard C. 55 and Joy M. Dorf Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Prof. Lado is an expert in the area of entrepreneurship in developing countries, specifically how supply chain and social networks as well as government policies facilitate and promote entrepreneurship and economic development. For the last few summers, Prof. Lado has been a visiting professor at the School of Management at the University of Science and Technology of China. Prof. Lado and his colleagues are investigating the ways the Chinese government is facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship in the emerging economy through the creation of science and technology parks designed to attract local and foreign start-ups. Last year, Prof. Lado presented a paper in China that addressed issues of sustainability in the supply chain, an area of interest for the Chinese who are trying to address pollution problems by encouraging companies to be greener. The general perception is that being greener compromises the bottom line, says Prof. Lado. My research shows that this is not always the case. Companies can be profitable and green. A half a world away in Konstanz, Germany, Associate Professors of Consumer & Organizational Studies Sandra Fisher and Michael Wasserman co-teach a Sustainable Supply Chain Management course at the University of Applied Sciences, one of Clarkson s international partners. Prof. Fisher s research centers around human resources management and, in particular, contingent work, while Prof. Wasserman s interests include the area of environmental supply chain. Building on their respective areas of expertise, the six-week summer course considers the supply chain from both a people and an environment perspective.

P a g e 3 Looking at the supply chain from both of these two perspectives is consistent with the approaches that our European partner schools use to teach their students, says Prof. Fisher. The two began their association with the German university in 2011, when Prof. Fisher spent her sabbatical there. The pair was invited to return the following summer to teach. Today, thanks to Profs. Fisher and Wasserman, the partnership between Clarkson and the University of Applied Sciences is growing. Last year, Prof. Wasserman created an opportunity for students at Clarkson to work with German students through cyber technology on an environmental supply chain problem related to solar panels. The experience provided an excellent opportunity for an exchange of cultural values related to the use of renewable energies. This summer, a group of Clarkson students will be joining the two faculty members in Germany to participate in the class and to learn about the German economy and business culture firsthand. A faculty exchange is also in the works. The two schools are quite similar in terms of size and program emphasis, says Prof. Wasserman. It s an ideal partnership. Three hundred miles away in Reims, France, Farzad Mahmoodi, the Joel Goldschein 57 Endowed Chair in Global Supply Chain Management, has been teaching a Global Supply Chain Management course for the International MBA Summer Program. Each year, about 25 students from a dozen countries participate in Prof. Mahmoodi s course at NEOMA Business School (a merger of the Rouen Business School and Reims Management School). I ve had students from Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Holland, Ireland, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, Tunisia all over the globe which always makes for a rich and dynamic classroom experience, he says. For the last eight years, Prof. Mahmoodi has also taught in the Executive MBA program each fall at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa in Canada. The goal of the program is to develop executives with a clear strategic vision, strong critical analysis skills, acute problemsolving capabilities, and strong team orientation. Associate Professors Michael Wasserman and Sandra Fisher Faster Method of Boarding Planes Clarkson researchers have developed a strategy to ease one of the headaches of airline travel: boarding the plane. Using computer modeling, School of Business Assistant Professor R. John Milne and undergraduate student Alexander Kelly 14 have devised a method which assigns airline passengers to a specific seat based on the number of bags they carry, so luggage will be evenly distributed throughout the plane. Their research was published in the Journal of Air Transport Management in January 2014. The new method would save at least several seconds in boarding time and prevent any one area of the plane from becoming overloaded with bags, said Milne, the Neil 64 and Karen Bonke Assistant Professor in Engineering & Management. Airlines could provide a smoother boarding experience for passengers by utilizing the research. Add that up over thousands of flights a day over the course of a year, and a large airline like Delta could save about $10 million a year. The story was picked up by national media, including The Los Angeles Times and NBC s Today show. School of Business Professor R. John Milne and undergraduate student Alexander Kelly 14.

P a g e 4 (l-r) Students Raychel Rieder, Ross VanNostrand, Juliana Stoian, Timothy Mather and Cassie Grace. GSCM Students Get Real-World Experience To understand how business really works, students need real experiences. Before graduation, nearly all School of Business students participate in a co-op and/or an internship. Through these experiences, students gain the creative thinking, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork and communication skills that lead to accelerated success. Jeff Taylor, director of Clarkson s Career Center, credits the students for making Clarkson the national leader in professional experiences. When a Clarkson intern leaves a position, companies often seek to fill these openings with other Clarkson candidates, due to their on-the-job performance and work ethic, says Taylor. Clarkson business students also get hands-on and leadership experiences through global learning opportunities, professional clubs and business competitions. Here are the real-world experiences of a few of our Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) and Engineering & Management (with a GSCM concentration) students: #1 in the Nation for internships U.S. News & World Report, 2013 200+ companies visit campus each year 96% placement rate 170+ companies hire our graduates each year Abigail Cummings 15 Internship: Timberland, Stratham, N.H. Cummings spent two months working as an Operations Intern, creating 32 process maps for internal and external supply chain operations. I couldn t have imagined a better experience, she says. She also participated in a three-week global business program offered by the School of Business. We went to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, she says. We explored the countries, visited companies, from IBM to a tropical fish farm. It taught me so much about international business. Cassie Grace 15 Co-op: Johnson & Johnson, Skillman, N.J. At J&J, Grace compared the company s database with their outsourced distribution centers databases in order to find and fix discrepancies. She also led the creation of a forecasting tool for three distribution centers to determine which areas of storage would most likely be over-stocked so alternative plans could be made. When she s off the job and out of the classroom, Grace can be found on Clarkson s athletic fields, playing DIII lacrosse and soccer. Timothy Mather 14 Co-op: Johnson & Johnson, Skillman, N.J. Internship: General Electric Aviation, Cincinnati, Ohio In addition to a co-op and internship, Mather started a branded water business, Golden Springs Water, as part of Clarkson s first-year, two-semester Entrepreneurship class. He also spent a semester at the Strathclyde Business School in Glasgow, Scotland. I chose Clarkson because it offered one of the most comprehensive supply chain curriculums and I was drawn to its proximity to the Adirondack Park, says Mather. Christopher Plummer 14 Operations Internship: Raytheon Company, Andover, Mass. For two summers, Plummer worked on a number of six sigma projects in the Circuit Card Assembly area for Raytheon. On campus, Plummer has taken advantage of opportunities for leadership development, serving as the Senior Class Treasurer, Captain of the Men s Swimming Team and as a mentor for the EM 120/121 class. Clarkson prepares you for the real world, he says. Raychel Rieder 14 Internship: IBM Microelectronics Division, Essex Junction, Vt. At IBM, Rieder managed the weekly component ordering process for new products in North America and the reorder point process for a top revenue-generating client. She also established a new way to convert raw data into an easily visible key process indicator for organizational metric reporting. On campus, she has taken on leadership roles in Clarkson s APICS Student Chapter and the Engineering & Management Society.

P a g e 5 Juliana Stoian 15 Internship: Xerox Corporation, Webster, N.Y. After her sophomore year, Stoian interned at Xerox as a database analyst. The intern program covered everything from supply chain system and operations to the engineering of materials, marketing and manufacturing processes, says Stoian. A few weeks after her internship ended, she headed off to Grenoble Ecole de Management to study abroad in Grenoble, France. Ross VanNostrand 14 Co-op: DuPont, Wilmington, Del. VanNostrand worked for the Fortune 100 company as a logistics/sourcing specialist. Among his responsibilities: rebuilding a spreadsheet to forecast moving inventory and pricing data for Fluorspar and helping to reconcile supplier accounts for over/under payments by working with DuPont plant sites and transaction employees in India. Joseph Zeitler 14 Internships: National Grid, Syracuse, N.Y. General Electric Aviation, Lynn, Mass. Both of my internships were great experiences, says Zeitler. At National Grid, he worked as an operations intern, investigating the causes of system errors in preparation of SAP conversion and devised solutions and created process maps. At GE, Zeitler created material transfer orders and helped reduce inventory by $1 million. $57,900 Average starting salary Placing Clarkson #17 out of 1003 universities nationwide surveyed by PayScale, an independent compensation benchmarking service The Power of Cooperation in SCM Negotiations Effective negotiation. In the world of supply chain management, knowing how to negotiate with suppliers and customers to get the best deal while maintaining trust and a positive relationship is key to long-term success. Last fall, veteran supply chain management leader Bob Parker, formerly of Ford Motor Company and International Harvester, shared 40+ years of professional insight and expertise with MBA students at Clarkson. Parker made a strong case that customers and suppliers are in an interdependent relationship so that cooperation is a far more powerful strategy for success than adopting an adversarial one. He illustrated this point by leading the students in a competitive exercise called Red/Blue, a variation of The Prison s Dilemma, which emphasizes the role of risk and trust in building and maintaining relationships. MBA students were broken down into two pairs of customer/supplier negotiations. For 10 rounds, each team had to choose a negotiation strategy without any direct communication. They could adopt a win-win strategy (red) or a win-lose strategy (blue). Twice during the game, each team could choose a negotiator to meet in private to try to hash out an agreement about how to play each round for maximum benefit. The point of the exercise was for each team to finish with a positive score and recover the $5 each student had at risk. The catch? Working cooperatively (win-win) offered fewer short-term points for a team than employing an adversarial strategy (win-lose). So how does an incentive to get a bigger payoff in the short term affect trust and the longer-term success of a negotiation? And is it a risk worth taking? The answer? The teams that employed the win-win strategy the longest fared better in the long run. The earlier trust broke down in the process, the less successful the teams. For successful negotiations, you must separate your needs from your wants and you must understand the other party s needs vs. wants, said Parker. Each party must insist that their needs get met. Do not return without your key mandates. Yield your wants only when needed to meet the other party s needs. So how does an incentive to get a bigger payoff in the short term affect trust and the longer-term success of a negotiation? Bob Parker

P a g e 6 Associate Professor Santosh Mahapatra The challenge is how to maintain the integrity of the products while turning a reasonable profit. Prof. Mahapatra Managing Supplier Relations and Logistics in Niche Market Supply Chains Associate Professor of Operations & Information Systems Santosh Mahapatra spent his sabbatical in the fall of 2013 working with companies to improve logistics and supplier relations in the luxury vehicle manufacturing industry in Italy and in the handloom industry in India. Teaming up with faculty in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Bologna s School of Business, Prof. Mahapatra worked with luxury automotive company Lamborghini and high-end motorcycle manufacturer Ducati to improve supply chain operations. In a niche market in which a car can cost upwards of $500,000 and a motorbike upwards of $40,000, customers expect innovative features, lots of customization options and first-class service. This poses unique challenges for supplier relations. The high-end components that go into these cars and motorcycles are very expensive and there are very few suppliers, says Prof. Mahapatra. The manufacturers cannot afford to hold too much inventory so they rely on their suppliers to have the materials ready to ship when they need them. Working with executives at Ducati, for example, Prof. Mahapatra helped develop an information system to manage data on suppliers, their facilities, characteristics and performance. The goal was to improve information-based decision making to guarantee a smoother flow of materials to meet the highly unpredictable demand. In India, a very different niche market presented a unique set of supply chain problems. The handloom industry plays an important role in the country s economy, employing hundreds of thousands of weavers who handloom fabrics and apparel for India s domestic and international textile markets. Each product is really an artistic splendor, and therefore unique, which is the basis of its worth, says Prof. Mahapatra. So the challenge is how to maintain the integrity of the products while turning a reasonable profit. At the Xavier Institute of Management in Bhubaneswar, Prof. Mahapatra investigated the complex supply chain of the handloom sector firsthand. The weavers work with contract manufacturers who supply the materials they weave into saris and other apparel, he says. An exclusive group of retailers sell the products at a good price to earn a profit and keep the industry financially viable. To preserve the artistry, the manufacturing is still household-based. The weavers are skilled artists, so supplier relationships are idiosyncratic. The retailers must motivate the weavers to turn out products to keep the supply up without adversely affecting their creativity. So it is not a typical supply chain problem. While in India, Prof. Mahapatra also began working with faculty at the Amrita School of Business in Kochi, India, on another socially responsible supply chain challenge the management of disaster relief operations. The researchers are developing a humanitarian supply chain model utilizing the immense experience of Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM), an international relief organization based in India. Every humanitarian crisis is a logistics nightmare, says Prof. Mahapatra. Every disaster brings a demand for materials and assistance, but each one has its own unique set of challenges so each solution is different. For Prof. Mahapatra, the humanitarian supply chain presents an exciting opportunity for research. It requires a very different application of the basic principles of supply chain management to balance costs with social responsibility.

Driving Reputation. Driving the Global Marketplace. Supply Chain Management at Clarkson University An interview with Dayle M. Smith, dean, Clarkson University School of Business QYou joined the Clarkson School of Business last year as dean. What was your impression of the School of Business in general and the Global Supply Chain Management program in particular? Among the reasons I wanted to come to Clarkson Q was that it offered an exciting opportunity to work with an outstanding faculty and with programs poised to meet the needs of a changing global landscape. At the top of that list is the Global Supply Chain Management program, which has consistently ranked in the top 20 for the last 12 years. We have an internationally recognized faculty doing seminal research in global supply chain disciplines looking at both the operational and behavioral sides and at issues of supplier relations, process optimization, sustainability and Q human capital. For example, Farzad Mahmoodi, the Joel Goldshein 57 Endowed Chair in Supply Chain, was recently recognized by the International Journal of Production Research as one of the journal s most prolific researchers over a 26-year period, with a ranking of 32 out of 7,103 authors worldwide. Clarkson presented an opportunity to build on what was already great, and to drive more national and international attention around programs, research and outstanding students. Also, a very strategic decision had been made a number of years ago to change Clarkson s traditional business programs into interdisciplinary majors that captured more of what really happens in the business community domestically and internationally. Our employers understand this; our faculty use their expertise to prepare students appropriately. Q How exactly are these programs of study more in sync with business today? We aren t looking at the functional areas of business in a vacuum but, rather, how they interact together to meet the needs of global business. We aren t focusing on strategy for strategy s sake, we are focusing on how to use strategy to drive the kinds of relationships that evolve to develop superior products and services and to meet customer needs. This is an exciting and innovative way of thinking about business education. That cross-functional approach is reflected in our global supply chain management program and is one reason why Fortune 500 companies return to Clarkson year after year to hire our students. How important is an understanding of Supply Chain for future business leaders? Learning about the supply chain is essential to understanding the nature of business and how business responds to challenges and opportunities in the environment. You can t understand the nature and complexity of the relationships among suppliers, manufacturers and customers or how to innovate and improve products or services without understanding the supply chain. With that in mind, how will The School of Business continue to invest in Global Supply Chain Management? Some of the exciting new initiatives include leveraging our talent to create a professional M.S. degree in Global Supply Chain Management. It enhances the ability of our faculty to continue to produce important research in the field and builds on our distinctive core competencies. This program is also a response to a need expressed by our corporate partners. Our new strategic plan for the Business School includes the launch of this degree program. We are committed to expanding our faculty in logistics/supply chain, and project management. We are actively recruiting in these areas. The impact of a sustained investment in our faculty and interdisciplinary research will enable us to continue to build our resources across Engineering and Management, Global Supply Chain Management, and in our MBA programs. P a g e 7 Dayle Smith, dean, School of Business

Clarkson APICS Student Chapter Last fall, a group of School of Business students reestablished an APICS Student Chapter at Clarkson. Founded in 1957, APICS (The Association for Operations Management) is the leading professional organization for supply chain management. It also provides training and certification programs and currently has over 37,000 members and 250 partners worldwide. Prof. Farzad Mahmoodi is serving as the faculty advisor for the Clarkson chapter. Among the benefits of a membership is the opportunity to network with experienced professionals. Four Clarkson APICS members attended the 2014 Northeast District Student Case Competition in early February in Albany, N.Y., where they had the opportunity to showcase their knowledge in supply chain to potential employers, including IBM. APICS students also participated in workshops related to interviewing and resume writing in preparation for Clarkson s Spring Career Fair. The chapter will Clarkson APICS Student Chapter officers. Standing (l-r): Scott Cohen 14 (Director of Membership), Raychel Rieder 14 (President), Marianne Schumacher 14 (Secretary); Sitting (l-r): Brian Ashline 14 (Treasurer) and Elizabeth Duba 15 (Vice President). be hosting alumni supply chain leaders for on-campus events in the spring. In March, Jim Peterson 80, corporate initiatives director at General Electric, will speak on Leading Lean Transformations. Then, in April, Jim Snyder 87, director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will be presenting on sales and operations planning. Announcing Clarkson s 14th Annual Executive Seminar in Global Supply Chain Management August 5 8, 2014 Clarkson Campus Highly Interactive Format Hands-on Simulation & Negotiation Exercises Join 450 past participants from 70 globally recognized companies including: Accenture Alcoa Avon Products Babcock Power Bank of America Boeing Company Carrier Corporation Corning Incorporated Crane Company Cybex Dell Computer Delta Airlines Dresser-Rand Eastman Kodak Frito-Lay General Dynamics General Electric General Motors Grainger Hewlett-Packard Honeywell International IBM ITT Industries Johnson & Johnson Lockheed Martin Lutron Electronics National Grid Northrup Grumman Osram Sylvania Pfizer Rockwell International Saint- Gobain Sikorsky Aircraft Stanley Black & Decker Texas Instruments Toyota Industrial Equipment Welch Allyn Xerox Corporation To register or request more information: www.clarkson.edu/business/executive/seminar/index.html or contact Tanya Conto, Program Coordinator 315-268-7969 Fax 315-268-3810 gscm@clarkson.edu RC 1.8M 8/13 CP Ranked as a top 20 Supply Chain Management program in the nation since 2003 by Global Supply Chain Management Program Clarkson University Box 5765, 8 Clarkson Avenue Potsdam, NY 13699 FC 3/14 1.8M CP Equal Opportunity Policy Clarkson University does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, color, creed, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, veteran or marital status in provision of educational opportunity or employment opportunities.