I bet they are making a Flux Capacitor

[caption id="attachment_135" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="I assure you...this is NOT relevant"][/caption]

In another attempt to write about an article related to industry I came across this guy...Google and General Electric Team Up on Energy Initiatives.  It is a short article about General Electric and Google getting together for energy issues.  The point that the article makes that I got my attention was the reference to energy transmission capacity with the current energy infrastructure.  I think this is a point most people don't think about when they talk about change in the energy sector.  I know that I had not thought of this issue until I met Chris from my Sloan core team.  Before coming to Sloan he worked for a company that was working on this exact issue and he had some very interesting incites on the energy infrastructure in the U.S.

Lets just say that

1. By communistic magic we could provide everyone in the U.S. with an electric car


2. Solar power worked as well as hippies wished it would...and could provide all the free energy we needed

What would happen?  A vast majority of the population would come home from work just after 5 PM and they would plug in their cars to charge for the night.  Can you imagine the size of the energy pull and the strain this would put on the electrical grid?  Epic Fail!

It is good to know that people are thinking about the indirect effects of trying to change the way we generate and use energy.

Oh bloggy blog

So...not much is going on here.  The semester is in full swing and the work load is starting to ramp up.  So far, it is not too bad.  The fun time for me and scheduling is lunch time.  Lunch time is about the only time that everyone in a group is free, and so everyone thinks that it is a good time to have a meeting.  Problem is we are all in multiple groups.  On top of that, I have a professor who has to miss some lectures and he also thinks that lunch time is a good time to have make-up sessions.  As far as school work/homework/reading goes, nothing too serious yet.  Silly OP project is looming out there but otherwise all is well in Whovillle.

I would have plenty of free time if EA had not released Spore.  On top of that, Rock Band 2 is coming out as well as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  On top of all of that, my XBOX 360 died (2nd time in two years...and I still would recommend XBOX360 over PS3!).  I am very sad to say that I do not have enough time to play all of the video games that I want to.  Stupid school...getting in the way of my video game playing.

Engineering classes are fun.  They feel natural.  I feel bad for the PhD students sitting next to me in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Process Pathways...this one guy today kept asking me questions about the material..and I did not have the heart to tell him that I have no idea what is going on.  It's not to say that I can't comprehend the material...but it has been some time since I had Organic chemistry (or any chemistry for that matter) and I really have to think about what the professor is saying.

Some McKinsey guy (Gene Zelazny) came and gave us a presentation on presentations today (no, that is NOT a typo).  I can say that I did not fall asleep once...so he rated very high on the interesting scale.  Of course, everything he said seemed so logical and simple...but at the same time (like so many things that should be common sense) people don't always act logically.  For example, as he was presenting he would hit the period button after you read his slides.  Apparently, the period button turns your PowerPoint to a blank screen.  When the screen goes blank, you look at the presenter and stop looking at the screen.  Makes sense...but no one does it.

Cliff Notes: If you ever have to do a presentation in a business setting, you are going to need his (Gene Zelazny) books.

A comment on a Lean article

So our blog group said we were going to write about industry articles we find that can be tied back to LFM.  I have s-t-r-u-g-g-l-e-d with this greatly.  I don't read the news and outside of school the only message boards I read have the maturity level of a 13 year old boy.  What can I say?  Idiots are my people.  Spend 10 minutes at lolcats and you will see where I am coming from.  The other content from the message boards I read is NOT appropriate for this blog.  I guess I have to grow up eventually, but I'm not there yet.

So I was perusing Forbes.com and I ran across this article

Forbes article on Lean and the Army

We had a lean class this summer and so many LFM members are supply chain focused so this article jumped off the page at me.  I read the article and I saw a theme that was common during our lean class looking at the "pop culture" of lean.  When people use the word lean, they associate it with the tools and barely mention the (I'm going to use a dirty word in my lean class) culture.  The most that I saw in the article that was NOT about the tool set was

"formed process-improvement teams supported by analysts and championed by top leaders"

When I think lean the first thing that comes to my mind is a self-correcting and a learning culture.  My favorite analogy is the human body and the way white blood cells work or how DNA repairs itself if an error is made in copying.  I'm just skimming the analogy but I'm not here to talk about that.  The point is, the army has borrowed a good process from Wal-Mart and have been successful with it, but are they capable of taking it beyond that model...of improving on it?

As far as the supply chain aspect of this article goes, I did find it interesting and relevant to the LFM program.  While I am much more interesting in what I call "operations" (as in running a factory) but MANY members of the LFM are supply chain focused and I think they would find this article interesting.

LFM Application Process

So I have created a new category for my blog, LFM - Application Process.  Since this blog is primarily for incoming students, to give them my interpretation of LFM, I wanted to cover the stressful process of applying.  Generically I wanted to outline the time line I used for applying and anything I took from my experience.  First I will start out with a little more background about myself.

It may seem silly but I have known that I wanted to get an Engineering degree and an MBA since high school.  I am one of those nerdy people who was thinking about job security, salary ranges, and other fun words that are both incredibly important and unimportant all at the same time.  In high school, my dream job was to be a 3D movie animation person (think Industrial Light and Magic, ILM, or Pixar) but I decided that it would be difficult to be successful in such a niche market.  I was in high school when the whole dot-com thing was going on and I knew that it could not last...and then there would be a ton of computer trained people with nothing to do, which would limit my escape options if the animator role did not work out.  Right or wrong..smart or stupid...I picked engineering plus MBA.  Why did I select chemical engineering?  It had the highest exit salary for undergrads.  Its as good a reason as any and how was I supposed to know at 18?  Anywho, I knew I wanted the MBA from my work experience in a chemical plant during high school.  In high school I worked in a chemical plant for a specialty chemicals company entering data and helping out wherever necessary (driving the forklift, mixing batches of chemicals and distributing the product into drums, etc.).  The manufacturing facility where I worked was next door to the main office so I also interacted with the company management.   From talking to a number of people about what they did, I felt like I would enjoy working in a manufacturing facility in some type of managerial role and the degrees that I needed to acquire to get to that position were an engineering degree and an MBA.

Fast forward to undergrad.  I took some business classes in undergrad along with my engineering classes.  Engineering was tough but fun...business was laughably easy.  At one point I thought about taking a 5th year to get a business degree as well as a chemical engineering degree which would allow me to get a 1-year MBA.  In the end I ruled it out because I wanted to get work experience as soon as possible.  I think this shows where I expected to get my MBA from.  Some college located near wherever I was working.

Fast forward to the GMAT.  I spent about a month studying for the GMAT.  I actually spent three months, but the first two were so on and off that I ended up going back over the material I covered and so I don't count it.  I purchased both the Kaplan books and the Princeton books.  The Princeton books were good at talking about the strategy and generic topics to study and were the most useful for studying.  The Kaplan books had a ton of examples for practice and were good for getting experience with problems.  The GMAT is NOT that hard of a test.  Given time, most people could figure out just about any problem in the GMAT (especially if they read the problem VERY carefully).  What makes the GMAT difficult is the time constraint.  I highly recommend spending about a month doing practice problems.  The point here is to get to a point where you can work the problems out quickly and really to just get used to the test format.  Don't practice with a calculator.  Get used to estimating and multiplying things out.

I had a 30 min commute to and from work so I used that time to study flash cards for the month I studied.  I found this to be very useful for the grammar part of the GMAT.  For practice problems, I spent about an hour a night for two weeks and did two crash days (8 straight hours) the weekend before I took the test.

I took the GMAT late in May (which makes this blog quite late, but I had to start somewhere) and boy was I surprised.  I scored very well and all of the sudden new options were opening up.  Could I make it into a top B-school?  Somehow I did.

On to the time line.  I applied to three top B-schools and I allocated about 2 months to my essays and applications.  I was able to reuse one or two essays, but basically it meant I had to write about 12 different essays.  My due dates ranged from the end of October to mid December, so I was working on my applications from early October to mid November.  I did not want to be rushed for something THIS important so I deliberately finished with a few weeks to spare for each deadline.  I'm sure LFM does not advocate this, but I am perfectly willing to say that my work suffered slightly during this time period because I focused heavily on my applications.  I'm certainly put in my hours at work, but I was not putting in anything extra.  Your LFM application is due on December 15th, see the LFM FAQ for more information, so I would recommend you plan to use the month of November to write and edit your essays, get your recommendations, and to fill out your application.

This leads us back to the GMAT.  If you have not already taken it, I would recommend signing up for it immediately.  I talked to some people today who did not take the GMAT until later in the year (November/December) and I am glad I did not do that.  Commit to a date and spend the money on the test.  That will force you to start studying and stop putting it off.  You don't want to be distracted by the GMAT while you are working on your applications, get that out of the way now!

When we get closer to the dealine I will write more about how I approached my essays, recommendations, and application.

The end of the beginning

So Sloan Orientation is over.  I've chewed, digested, and passed it.  Good but not great.  It was like drinking soda after eating ice cream.  It is just not as sweet.  Compared to the start of summer with the orientation we got in LFM, Sloan orientation was bland.  I'm sure the Sloan students think it was fantastic...but they are drinking soda for the first time and we (LFM) are still savoring our ice cream.

Not to imply that the week did not have some good moments.  Some of the events (like our first case study or Question and Answer sessions) was bland because we already did it in LFM.  The Warren center was fun.  The day started early in the morning and for our team it was a bit hectic.  One of our team members did not arrive and was not answering his phone.  My team includes Chris, Amanda, Jun, Marcelo, and Sushmita and our pilot is Kumar (he took all the pictures).  Marcelo could not make it and we were forced to continue on without him.  All in all I have a fantastic team.  I've heard some horror stories but I think my team has and will continue to gel.

[caption id="attachment_111" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Pacific Penguins (minus one)"][/caption]

So we started the day at the Warren center with some mind games.

[caption id="attachment_101" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Touch the numbers"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_103" align="alignnone" width="111" caption="The island game (two blind, two mute, one leader, and the ground is lava...go)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_102" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The blind leading the blind"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_104" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Tossing a ball into a cup...had I listened to the instructions I would have known we only needed to get ONE ball in the cup...not all three...I am the weakest link"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The ground is lava"][/caption]

After lunch we built lake-worthy rafts

[caption id="attachment_106" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Cast away? Can we make it?"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_107" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Tight ropes make for strong boats...I am no longer the weakest link!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_108" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Cast away? We would make it.  First to launch, first to return, and our boat was used by three other teams!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_109" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Not all teams were as successful as the Pacific Penguins...don't worry, we lent them our boat."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Penguins don't need to swim"][/caption]

We finished up the day at a climbing ladder

[caption id="attachment_112" align="alignnone" width="111" caption="Where were you when they built that ladder to heaven (South Park...look it up)?"][/caption]

Overall, a good day.

[caption id="attachment_113" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Pacific Penguins - Marcelo + Pilot"][/caption]

The final day included the beer game.  The LFM group played this game during the summer so I did not attend, but I heard they had as much fun as we did.  It is always hilarious in interesting to observe how everyone makes the same mistakes in that game.

The week finished up with a nice mixer and school starts on Tuesday with registration.  Should be great!