Introduction to Operations Management
Introduction to Operations Management was the title of just one of the classes I took this summer (15.761) at MIT, but it may well have described my entire experience this summer. I spent 3 months taking 5 courses (15.761, 15.064: Engineering Probability and Statistics, 15.066: System Optimization and Analysis, 15.317: Organizational Leadership and Change, and ESD.60: High Velocity Organizations) with 46 other people in the class of ’11 (Snake-Eyes class). Needless to say, it ended up being a ton of work, more than maybe I expected. But when there is a ton of work, that means there is usually a lot of accomplishments, and this was no exception.
One of the classes I really enjoyed (not including the probability stuff in 15.066 – Arnie Barnett is the man!) was the Systems Optimization class, taught by Jeremie Gallien. This class (really well taught) focused on the use of linear optimization techniques (including Integer and Mixed Integer Programs) to solve various types of problems, including planning problems, network flow problems (max-flow, transportation) and scheduling problems. The class, being taught as part of Sloan, was more about problem formulation and applications, rather than the algorithms to solve them. I appreciated this approach, because I took a class as an undergrad that was called Intro to Operations Research where we just did the Simplex algorithm by hand over and over and over again, and I got basically nothing out of it. By contrast, this class had a lot of real world examples that Prof. Gallien presented from his experience consulting for companies. In addition, we did a final project as part of the class where we applied the techniques we used in the class to a real life Operations problem, at the Pre-Admissions Testing Clinic (PATA) at Mass General Hospital, which ended up being a great success, thanks to our collaboration with Kelsey McCarty, a Sloan ’10 who was interning at PATA for the summer (read our final report here). Our team, with Prof Gallien, is continuing to collaborate with the managers at PATA as a follow-on, and there is a good chance our model will help them make decisions about how to schedule patients and providers in the future to reduce patient waiting times in the clinic, which is pretty cool.
Maybe some of the most important things I learned was about what it means to work on a team in a high-pressure environment. I had 4 other people on my summer team, Five-Alive, and we did basically all of our work together. We also did a lot of team building exercises including Outward Bound and a really cool Leadership Reaction Course (obstacle course with water – I didn’t get wet) at Camp Edwards, an Air National Guard base on Cape Cod. I learned a lot about teamwork from all of these experiences, but one key takeaway was that one of the most critical traits of a leader is to listen – not only in the sense of not talking when somebody else is, but to really concentrate on what others are saying and converse. It sounds simple, and maybe it is, but I noticed that we tended to stop doing that as work kept piling up and that led to a lot of re-work, wasted effort, and frustration.
- My “photoshopping” skills are limited…
In the end, all our hard work paid off (I think we consistently produced some of the best work in the class), and through all our time we spent together, I got to know four other awesome people with really interesting backgrounds and perspectives.
I’m looking forward to fall semester (orientation starts tomorrow) but I hope it doesn’t kill me – if I thought 5 classes were bad, I’m taking 7 this fall!
Plug for MIT Lincoln Laboratory (“The Lab”)
As cool as it looks
For the past two years I have worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, or the Lab for short. Not many people outside of the research circles know about this place, and in fact I only stumbled upon it in my job search because I went to a job fair for high tech companies and got some literature. In fact, the wikipedia page on the Lab is comically short considering the amount of research that has been conducted there for the past 50+ years – while the Lab didn’t invent radar, it probably perfected it. However, because most of this research is classified for national security, 95% of the amazing work by Lab scientists goes unpublished. When I was looking around for information on the Lab, I could hardly find any online, so hopefully somebody may stumble upon this page when they are thinking about working there.
While at the Lab, I worked for the Surveillance Systems group, Group 42. When I got to the Lab, the group was called the Air Traffic Control and Surveillance Systems Group, and about half of the group’s research is sponsored by the FAA. Most of my work centered around the TCAS collision avoidance system, which is mandated by Congress to be installed on every commercial passenger aircraft above a certain size.
TCAS vertical speed indicator (displayed in cockpit)
I also worked on new collision avoidance systems for UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles). My major project was developing airspace encounter models for generating random, realistic encounters so that these systems can be tested in simulation. Over the course of developing these models, I learned a great deal about Bayesian networks, Monte Carlo methods, importance sampling, radar (note: the giant radar ALTAIR in that link is operated by Lincoln for missile defense in the Marshall Islands), flight dynamics, and especially air traffic control. It was a fascinating project, and only one of many fascinating projects that I was involved in (I will probably blog about my thoughts on ATC at some point in the future).
Global Hawk, one of the platforms we worked with.
I’ve worked with some amazingly smart and capable people who I now consider my friends. In particular Mykel Kochenderfer and Jim Kuchar have been my mentors, among many others who don’t have personal websites. Over half of the Lab employees have PhDs, most from MIT and other top schools, and the sheer brain power there is kind of awesome. People also work at the Lab for the love of their research, and that definately comes through as well.
I will be leaving the Lab in a couple months because I accepted an offer to be a LGO fellow at MIT. However, my work there has been very intellectually satisfying, and it has served to focus my future academic interests. For instance, I will recieve a MS in Computer Science, largely because my work at the Lab has piqued my interest in AI and machine learning. In particular, I hope to research how these principles can be applied to improve the efficiency and operation of manufacturing companies. I would say that the Lab is an excellent place to work if you are interested in doing cutting edge research, are intellectually curious and smart, and enjoy tackling difficult problems in the area of national defense, homeland security or the FAA.
