Where is the customized MBA in manufacturing?

Zhao Taoyong worked as a marketing manager in a private manufacturing company before studying for an MBA. After doing a review with his boss, he could not find the answer to some questions: Why are our product prices so high? Why does product quality always go wrong? Why are star products always out of stock? Why is the product launch cycle long and the process slow? Why do some products always sell poorly? Why can't the inventory of certain models always be digested?

Interactive topic: Customized MBA in Manufacturing, do you want to read it?

Absence of customization

The second quarter of China's medium-speed economic growth coincides with the arrival of the era of large enterprises. The global network intelligent manufacturing and service model have brought more severe challenges to Chinese manufacturing. Although there are 600,000 engineering college graduates in China every year, which is 10 times that of the United States, most of them are only good at linear thinking, lack experience in project and teamwork, and have poor communication skills. In the survey of the "CEConline" website, 95% of netizens recognized the necessity of a customized MBA in the manufacturing industry. Netizen "Little Stone 1984" believed: "Some people are very rigorous in the field of natural sciences, but they are not good in interpersonal communication. There are many deficiencies. Many people who go from technical positions to management positions are often exhausted by themselves, but their subordinates are so idle." The transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry requires the support of a large number of high-quality talents who understand operations management and have a global perspective. But where is the talent?

The Antai School of Economics and Management of Shanghai Jiao Tong University keenly captured this market demand. They carefully studied the successful experience of a large number of European and American business schools in the field of manufacturing and supply chain. The "Global Operation Leader of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)" "The project (LGO) came into their sights. In the 1980s, Toyota accounted for 20% of sales in the U.S. market. Japanese manufacturing brought a strong sense of crisis to U.S. manufacturing companies such as General Motors and Boeing. They turned to the world's leading scientific and technological research institution - the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Institute (MIT) conducted in-depth research and completed the famous report "Made in America". "At that time, excellent MBA graduates in the United States tended to go to the high-income and high-return financial industry or consulting industry, and fewer and fewer talents were willing to go to manufacturing. In 1988, large manufacturing companies such as General Motors, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, and United Technologies found MIT. , I hope to customize MBA and continuously supply outstanding talents for manufacturing enterprises." Zhou Lin, Dean of Antai College of Economics and Management, recalled.

The MIT-LGO program has lasted for more than 20 years, and more than 1,000 customized MBAs have contributed a lot to maintaining the status of the United States as the world's No. 1 manufacturing power. Many of them are global Vice President Pat Shanahan, Apple Global R&D President Dong Field and other corporate executives. While those large manufacturing companies support LGO projects, they also transfer their manufacturing bases to China. They hope that MIT can cultivate more local manufacturing management talents for them in China. The cooperation between MIT and Jiaotong University will come naturally.

In 2006, Shanghai Jiaotong University and MIT jointly launched the "China Global Operation Leaders" (CLGO) project, referring to the MIT-LGO model, focusing on providing students with practice and teamwork, etc. experience training. Many world-renowned companies in manufacturing and operations, such as Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, China Lonking, Cisco, Dell, Honeywell, Intel, Novartis, Tyco International and United Technologies, have become corporate partners in the project partner.

Professor Chen Xiaorong, director of the CLGO project, told reporters, "These cooperative enterprises are leaders in their respective industries. They regularly participate in tripartite talks to exchange project progress, send company executives to the school to give lectures, or come to recruit students. , and there are also companies that provide students with company visits and internship opportunities. Cooperative companies provide our students with more practical opportunities to keep the project down-to-earth.”

The source of evolution

Providing talent support and contributing wisdom to China's economic development is the foundation of the business school's existence and development. At present, there are 237 colleges and universities with the qualification to offer MBA in the country. The number of applicants for MBA has increased steadily at an average annual rate of 20% in the past 20 years, and the number of applicants has exceeded 100,000. With the popularity of MBA education, the phenomenon of curriculum homogenization has become more and more serious.

Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University Antai School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang University School of Management, these first-class business schools striving for the right to speak in the strong college wall of science and engineering, from the overall westernization to the Chinese foundation, from the integration of practice to Customization, in the more than 20 years of Chinese MBA development, their critical thinking has been driven by the pace of the times to continuously lead changes and pave a new path for latecomers.

Similar to the CLGO project of Shanghai Jiaotong University Antai, Zhejiang University School of Management cooperated with McGill University (McGill) in Canada to launch the Global Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management (GMSCM) full-English dual degree on-the-job program, which is supported by Canada. Fang taught half of the courses and enrolled 27 students for the first time in 2013. In addition, Zhejiang University School of Management also offers a customized MBA program in the direction of Global Entrepreneurship Management (GEP).

If the traditional MBA education is a "combination boxing", can the customized MBA in the manufacturing industry be able to make more detailed tricks? The biggest feature of the customized MBA is pragmatism. The curriculum, teaching methods, internship programs, and value orientations are closely combined with the needs of enterprises, emphasizing the cultivation of students' ability to find and solve problems and a cross-cultural international perspective.

Ma Shuqun, who graduated from McGill with a master's degree in management, is the admissions director of GMSCM China, responsible for communication and cooperation with strategic cooperative enterprises. He told reporters: "emphasizing practical operation and good interaction with enterprises are the biggest features of this program."

Shou Yongyi, director of the MBA Center of Zhejiang University, believes that "Chinese MBA education increasingly emphasizes localization and globalization. Therefore, we are working hard to segment the market and do a customized MBA.” In teaching MBA operations management courses, Mr. Shou is also constantly exploring how to better combine theory with enterprise production practice. This semester he took the students to Wanshi. The Lee Group watched the research and development of new silk products, went to Supor Co., Ltd. to study the operation of the factory, and let the students learn to swim while swimming.

MBA China.com CEO Zhang Shihua told reporters, "At present, a comprehensive MBA can no longer meet the diversified needs of the market. A customized MBA emphasizes individualized training. In addition to Shanghai Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, there are many business schools. Taking the development path of characteristic MBA, like the Law Business MBA of China University of Political Science and Law, and the Futures MBA of China Agricultural University, all focus on one point, do a good job in segmenting the market, and have a high degree of market recognition.”

and Unlike many well-known foreign business schools, most Chinese business schools are subordinate to well-known universities. Therefore, breaking the disciplinary barriers in universities and using cross-integration to cultivate compound management talents has become a new trend in the reform of business schools. When the four colleges of Tsinghua University jointly launched the "MBA+X" dual degree last year, President Chen Jining publicly stated, "This is not simply to let engineering students learn MBA knowledge, nor is it to let MBA students learn some design and medical knowledge, but It is necessary to cultivate their entrepreneurial spirit and humanistic spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, cultivate students' management methods, different ways of thinking, and establish their critical thinking."

Zhou Lin, Dean of Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University, said: "Higher education has always emphasized the combination of production, education and research, and business schools have done the best in this regard. Our CLGO project is a combination of management and engineering masters. It is very difficult for engineering schools to convert scientific research results into productivity. Two-way cooperation is not only beneficial to The cultivation of talents is more conducive to the industrialization of scientific research projects.”

It can be said that the launch of the customized MBA program is a solid step for the business school to adjust the way of talent cultivation according to the needs of enterprises and society. How to break the barriers between universities and enterprises and deliver more and more practical talents to the society and enterprises is a compulsory course for managers of business schools and even all institutions of higher learning.

Enterprise Vision

One month internship, 3 lay students, what kind of surprises can a mature garment manufacturing company bring?

The Ningbo company of a garment group invested tens of millions to update the production line, but due to the limitation of the level of on-site management personnel, it could not give full play to the advantages of the equipment. With the mentality of trying it out, they provided a summer internship program for CLGO students. In the summer of 2011, Tang Liming, who was a tabloid reporter before studying at CLGO, led two other amateur classmates in the clothing industry. As soon as he got off the train, he plunged into the steaming printing and dyeing workshop and mingled with the front-line workers. In addition to the tools taught in the CLGO Leadership and Organizational Processes courses, knowledge of optimization models, system simulation, and statistics comes in handy. The former addresses organizational and human issues, while the latter addresses technical issues. In one month, the production process of the new equipment has been shortened from 7 days to 4 days, which is a great improvement for the garment industry with small orders and large batches. After the internship summary report, the boss of the company sent HR to "recruit security", but unfortunately Tang Liming and the others recruited another graduate before they graduated.

Looking back on this small success, Tang Liming said, "Without CLGO's education and constant visits to enterprises, the three of us laymen would not have been able to accomplish this task. What we have learned on paper is superficial, and we have not tried and practiced personally. , we will not feel the power of knowledge so clearly.”

For many years, the glass ceiling of multinational companies has always been an unspoken rule in the workplace. The shortage of management talents is the core pain point.

Mr. Y is a senior executive of a famous multinational company. He graduated from the MIT-LGO project in 1995. He tried hard to persuade his company to participate in the construction of the CLGO project and became a member of the management committee of CLGO. He believes that the biggest benefit of cooperative companies is the opportunity to recruit the best talents. In addition, CLGO provides enterprises with a relatively low threshold for cooperation in the first year of cooperation. After one year, enterprises can choose to continue to support or withdraw from the project . Mr. Y explained, "From a business budget perspective, it makes sense to lower the entry fee for the first year. Because a smaller investment is requested in the first year, and an additional investment is requested after a successful trial period, so that It’s easier for companies to operate.”

After recruiting suitable CLGO students, multinational companies do not place them in general management positions to fill vacancies, but spend 3-5 years on planned rotations To develop these talents with outstanding leadership potential, so that they can grow into the future leaders of the organization. In the years of teaching exchanges with MIT, Professor Liu Shaoxuan, who is in charge of the teaching of CLGO's operational strategy course, has a deep feeling. He is surprised by the extensive contacts between MIT professors and the industry, as well as the long-term investment of American companies in school-enterprise cooperation. They will spend 500 $10,000, 5 years to ask business schools to do industry tracking analysis to help companies formulate long-term strategies.

A world-renowned e-commerce company is facing huge pressure from Chinese competitors. As a senior manager of supply chain operations, Ms. K has served as an intern tutor for CLGO project students Zheng Yang and Wang Chuan. She is very patient. guide them to identify and solve problems. Zheng Yang is responsible for improving the company's inventory turnover in the Operations Management Department. He analyzes the company's operations, traces the source of inventory turns, and then coordinates the various functions to solve the problem. He persuaded departments from retail management to supply chain to operations to implement his quality control improvement recommendations in their processes. By the end of his internship, inventory turnover had improved significantly, and he insists that these achievements come from teamwork.

Wang Chuan helps optimize the inventory, transportation capacity and cost of the logistics center, and improve the response speed to customer orders. “The internship was completely different from my previous experience,” said Chuan Wang, “I learned how to work under uncertainty and react quickly. I also learned about B2C business and how to use data-based analytics to drive corporate strategy ." Zheng Yang, who joined the company after graduation, said: "This is a company that is very conducive to acquiring knowledge and practical skills and developing new industries. It has an open atmosphere and a company culture of hard work."

Ms. K highly recognized the efforts of CLGO students, she said, "These interns are quick to learn and have strong problem-solving skills. Some of their suggestions are interesting and far-sighted. Once the relevant departments accept these opinions, we will let the students put forward their suggestions. They have done a good job of solving the Some projects are entrusted to the business school for research, which not only solves the existing problems of the enterprise, but also gives full play to the advantages of the business school, and achieves a win-win situation for both parties." At the 30th anniversary conference of Tsinghua SEM last month, the chairman of China National Building Materials Group Co., Ltd. Song Zhiping said publicly.

According to the graduate employment data released by CLGO for four consecutive years from 2009 to 2013, more than 70% of the students were "contracted" by multinational manufacturing companies. Lu Lin, a professor of organizational behavior in the project, said, " It is a pity that many Chinese manufacturing industries are still busy with survival, and they have not yet realized the value of CLGO and do not know how to use the resources of business schools." In fact, in addition to multinational companies, many state-owned and private enterprises also hope to strengthen school-enterprise Collaborate to develop a custom MBA. However, they always expect to get ready-to-use materials immediately, but they do not give time for talents to adapt and soil for growth.

Workplace Accelerator

In just 30 years, China's manufacturing industry has made rapid progress, and talents who can take on the important responsibility of global operation and management are rare. Is China's manufacturing industry a lack of professional managers with strong executive power, or a lack of visionary CEOs? Faced with such a huge market demand, are the CLGO and GMSCM programs with an annual enrollment of about 30 people a banner, or are they just "a drop in the bucket"?

29-year-old Zhang Xu is a typical engineering man. After working in Suzhou Samsung LCD Co., Ltd. for 6 years, he gradually felt a kind of unease and fear of warm water frogs, and his desire for career promotion. And a re-examination of his own abilities made him turn his attention to CLGO. He took out the 200,000 yuan he had accumulated over the years to buy a house to pay for the tuition. With this money and two and a half years, Zhang Xu wanted to change to a brand-new career development platform. After school, busyness and tiredness became the main theme, and he gradually found that the more actively participating in the MBA, the more opportunities to exercise. Recently, the entrepreneurial team composed of Zhang Xu and other MBA students successfully advanced to the finals of the Jiaotong University Entrepreneurship Competition, attracting the attention of many investors, and the countdown to the implementation of the project has begun. He also applied for NIKE's summer internship program. For Zhang Xu, a new life full of passion is coming!

Li Bin, the Asia-Pacific R&D director of Bosch Power Tools (China) Co., Ltd., said: "Some of my classmates come to school by plane and train every week. In comparison, I drive by myself. I am very happy to be in the classroom within an hour.” After completing the MBA, he paid 90,000 yuan to study GMSCM, and he believes that any investment in education is worthwhile. Comparing the similarities and differences between the two, he feels that MBA focuses more on business management, capital and market models, which broadens his horizons; while GMSCM focuses on the details of R&D, production, quality and other operational management, making him more professionally Profound, the combination of the two helps him better complement his weaknesses.

The aforementioned Zhao Taoyong joined a foreign company as a project manager after two and a half years of experience in CLGO. The theory learned in the classroom and the practice of corporate practice answered his previous questions, giving him a "balcony perspective", which enables him to fully grasp the problems in manufacturing process management and front-end and back-end supply chain management and formulate more comprehensive solutions.

The high-intensity full-English teaching allows each customized MBA student to experience the "pressure cooker" melting, and a large number of corporate practices help them quickly convert knowledge into skills. Whether it is the in-service GMSCM of Zhejiang University or the full-time CLGO of Jiaotong University, the interviewed students agreed that it is best not to apply if they do not have a strong engineering background. Occasionally appearing on the CLGO official website, the announcement of withdrawal processing reflects from one side that it is not easy to complete this project.

Tang Liming's graduation speech represents the voice of many full-time MBA students. He said, "If MBA is just gold-plated, this layer of gold is too expensive. The real value of MBA education is to make us stop. , look at yourself, look at others, and look at the world. Life needs to stop, stop to think quietly, and summarize carefully. Figure out where we are going? How should we go? Who should we go with? This is growth.”

Stop, every heart longing for a career in the workplace.

(Part of the data and cases in this article are from the official website of Shanghai Jiaotong University CLGO project)