The Art (and Craft) of OM

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I have often wondered if Napoleon was astute or if he was short sighted when he fired Pierre-Simon Laplace – the most famous mathematician of his time – as his minister of the interior in under six weeks:

He carried the idea of the infinitely small into administration.😏

I have profitably carried the idea of the infinitesimal into industrial administration 😊  and the most recent publication that uses IPA – that I foreshadowed in God: Omni-channel Retailer – appeared online last December:

On my art and craft of combining academic publications with practical impact (that I have elaborated on in An Essay on Operations Management (2017)  that is clearly titled as an homage to Montaigne, and in Planned Spontaneity for Better Product Availability (2013)), you may recall one of my quotes from Cronin and Loewenstein’s The Craft of Creativity:

Elegance is not something that should be considered discretionary, but rather an intrinsic feature of a proposed solution. The tragedy in some academic circles is that they make elegance the “whole thing,” losing sight of the problem to be solved, while the pragmatic sort do not have the luxury for aesthetic considerations. The intersection of elegance and effectiveness is the essential intellectual challenge.

On the occasion of my 5th anniversary of being elected to the National Academy of Engineering for (being an Academic Capitalist) – Developing and Commercializing Innovative Solutions to Optimize Supply Chain Systems – I am pleased to embrace my newer perspective of being additionally an Academic Philanthropist – that I first coined in my most recent post À la recherche de moins de temps – by establishing an endowed fund to:

provide unrestricted support of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) activities, including, but not limited to programs and projects which focus on creating, managing, and/or implementing a wide range of programmatic and community outreach through the Cultural, Ethical, Social, and Environmental Responsibility [CESER] in Engineering Program; the Forum on Complex Unifiable Systems (FOCUS); Inclusive, Diverse, Equitable Engineering for All (IDEEA); EngineerGirl, and/or other priorities to further NAE’s mission (the “Purpose”).

The fund will be known as the Sridhar Tayur and Gunjan Kedia Endowed Fund.

A few days back, it was particularly satisfying to receive this email from an OrganJet client:

Hi Sridhar,

We made the trip today on a flight that you arranged for us and all went well. Everyone involved was thoroughly professional, yet friendly, from start to finish. And, we would have been very unlikely to do be able to do this trip without your help.

Your service made a big, positive difference for us.

Thanks again,

So, what is the difference (if any) between being an Academic Capitalist (SmartOps) and an Academic Philanthropist (OrganJet) in my Five Steps of the Art and Craft of Operations Management? Problem Identification (step 1) and in defining Value Monetization (step 5) in terms of:

Karma Points.☺️

 

 

 

 

1 comment

  1. We applaud Gunjan and you.

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