PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
KEONG LEONG, Feature Editor, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University

Cornell's Semester in Manufacturing: An Innovative Graduate-Level Teaching Approach

by Ronald W. Matthews, Visiting Professor of Manufacturing, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University

With the increased emphasis on corporate growth, many organizations have discovered the need to better understand and significantly improve the performance of their manufacturing operations. Numerous programs have been initiated, but the missing ingredient has been the addition of highly educated, high impact new employees who understand the principles of modern manufacturing.

These progressive organizations are now turning to the major universities in the United States, hunting for the skilled graduates who have the capability of making a significant contribution to the corporation. In response to this new requirement, the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University has implemented an innovative manufacturing education initiative. The initial results have been very positive and the intent is to continue in this direction.

Background

During the early 1990s, Dr. Richard Conway, a senior professor at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, experimented with new approaches for teaching the principles of modern manufacturing. His extensive teaching, consulting, research, and business experience provided him with the needed perspective to explore this complex issue.

Dr. Conway was able to successfully demonstrate, during his initial summer classes, that total subject immersion and extensive utilization of external participants resulted in a superior learning experience for the students. While these were only short three credit courses, he concluded that the concept should be developed further and tested as a full semester course which was delivered by a team of instructors.

Based on Dr. Conway's recommendation, Cornell University in 1994, with the assistance of Corning Incorporated, adopted his proposal and created an innovative non-traditional approach for providing a manufacturing education to graduate-level students. The new concept, titled "Semester in Manufacturing," was based on focusing the students' attention entirely on manufacturing principles, potential operating strategies, and appropriate deployment initiatives. This was accomplished through the creation of a 15- credit, total immersion course, which represents the students' only academic activity for the 16-week semester. The course was primarily taught to first-year graduate level students during their second semester.

Development

The course is a cooperative effort of three separate Cornell Schools (New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, College of Engineering, and the Johnson Graduate School of Management) and is sponsored by Cornell's Center for Manufacturing Enterprise. In addition, more than 30 industry executives and instructors from the three schools have participated in the classroom. This team of educators has participated in the design of the course and have been committed to the vision of delivering a quality education that provides these students with the tools required to succeed in a global manufacturing environment upon graduation.

The initial course offering was developed with extensive corporate and faculty input. Future curriculum modifications were implemented based on participant surveys, corporate recommendations, and professorial observations.

Additional course financial development support was provided through a 3-year $180,000 Federal grant under the Technology Reinvestment Program (from the National Science Foundation).

Leadership

The course team leaders have been Richard Conway, the Emerson Electric Company Professor of Manufacturing Management in the Johnson School; Tove Hammer, professor of organizational behavior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations; and Ronald Matthews, retired senior vice president of manufacturing and engineering at Corning Incorporated. In 1997 Dr. James Bradley, who is a recent graduate from Stanford University, will be joining the teaching team.

Approach

The course objective is to integrate the principle elements of modern manufacturing and demonstrate how they influence operating decisions. The traditional classroom activity is supported with numerous field trips and extensive participation by senior corporate managers and executives.

The majority of the student activity is conducted in teams, with each group containing significant background and skills diversity. The course also includes instruction on the techniques of effective team operation and management. The teams are required to prepare cases, study general issues, and present numerous written and oral reports. The team membership is varied during the semester to simulate the actual business environment and increase student diversity exposure. The participants are also required to conduct individual in-depth research and make several formal presentations on contemporary manufacturing issues.

During the semester, the class and faculty will visit more than 20 manufacturing plants, observe the operations, and interact with the manufacturing personnel. The tour sites are selected based on a willingness to share "real world" experiences and their relevance to the classroom topics. Classroom discussions also occur before and after these visits and written reports on each visit integrate these experiences with the classroom topics. These visits have also created a 3-year research database on current manufacturing initiatives.

While the course content includes a broad range of concepts that are important in manufacturing, there has been an extensive focus on the following key topics:

  1. The implications of the rapid reduction in product life-cycles and the exploding diversity of product mix.

  2. The continuing battle to achieve near-perfect product quality with processes that are imperfect and people who are merely human. The challenging task of getting people to perform numbingly repetitive jobs with superhuman reliability.

  3. The task of material planning and resource scheduling under the pressure of sharply reduced lead times.

  4. The implications of interconnected information systems, from point-of- sale data collection to EDI communications with vendors.

  5. The new organizational structures of manufacturing management the downsized, reengineered, team-oriented manufacturing plant.

  6. The complex task of managing a manufacturing process that is spread around the world, producing a product mix that is distributed all over the world.

  7. The problems of performance measurement and evaluation for individuals, factories, processes, teams, products, etc.

Student Participants

Ninety-seven students have participated in the first three course offerings and all were enrolled in professional master's degree programs in Management, Industrial Labor Relations, or Engineering. The majority of the students had approximately 4 years of business experience since receiving their bachelor's degree and 40% had a technical undergraduate education. Interest by female students has increased each year with the 1996 class having 54% female participation. Seventeen countries have been represented and this international diversity has significantly increased the quality of the educational effort.

Corporate Participants

The success of this "Semester in Manufacturing" is dependent on the participation of Cornell's industrial partners who host the plant visits and share their real world experiences with the students. Examples of the 46 participating organizations are: AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department, BMW, Basset Walker Textiles, Chrysler, Copeland, Cummins Engine, Delco Electronics, Eastman Kodak, Emerson Electric, General Electric, General Motors, Harley Davidson, Honda of America, Nucor Steel, Ohio State University, Proctor & Gamble, Vulcraft, Worthington Industries, and Xerox.

A key example of external classroom participation has been an intensive three-day workshop in Process and Quality Engineering, developed by Corning's Corporate Engineering Group. This workshop presents a realistic introduction to process standardization, analysis of process capability, design of industrial experiments, statistical process control and systematic problem solving. Although the sessions were very challenging and technical, the students have strongly recommended continuation of this element in future classes.

Personnel from General Electric's Crotonville Management Education Center have also taught their 2-day Change Management Course. In future classes, additional corporations are committed to conducting workshops.

An example of corporate executive participation was the 4-day total involvement by the recently retired chairman of Union Carbide. He met with student teams, participated in classroom discussions, delivered lectures, and made a significant contribution to the practical business knowledge of the students.

Metrics

The course has received national attention with the following comments appearing in Business Week:

Cornell is strengthening its manufacturing niche with the addition of the novel Semester in Manufacturing course that features field trips, projects, and team teaching. The Johnson MBA School is now considered one of the top five favorite hunting grounds for corporations recruiting graduate students with production skills.

Another important metric utilized is how the corporate recruiters view the graduating students. While the database is limited to only two graduating classes, the preliminary results indicate that the student participants are receiving more offers of employment and are able to command premium salaries. A student database has been recently established and future research on their success in the corporate environment is planned.

Based on the results of these initial classes and the positive response by Cornell's industrial partners and students, the Johnson Graduate School added the course to its permanent curriculum in 1996.

Key Learnings

The following is a summary of our initial findings:

  1. Team-based learning and teaching is very complex at times but can result in a superior learning experience if properly executed.

  2. Complete subject immersion enhances the in-depth learning process but can isolate the participants from the balance of their graduate class.

  3. External corporate participation in curriculum development and delivery brings a needed practical "real world" perspective to the classroom, but recruiting qualified individuals could be a major problem.

  4. The grading requirements and pressures can create a negative impact on the classroom environment but should be retained to guarantee student participation.

  5. The course has been positively received by the participants and has generated additional student applications for the Johnson School.

  6. Having a diverse class (education, gender, nationality, work experience) increases the difficulty of teaching but significantly improves the learning experience for the students.

  7. The course is more expensive because of the extensive travel for tours, infrastructure support and required faculty, but the additional external recognition realized could generate additional revenues.

  8. Arranging numerous successful plant tours is critical to clearly illustrating the practical aspects of the principles taught in the classroom.

Future

The Semester in Manufacturing will be only offered during the Spring semester and the 1997 course is scheduled to begin on January 20th. The critical tasks facing the teaching team are maintaining the course quality as participation grows, continuing the process of creating long-term corporate relationships, and recruiting the needed faculty. Since corporate, student, and faculty interest continues to increase, the issue is to successfully manage growth.