With Apologies to Alice Cooper...School's Out!

Wednesday and Thursday were the last official class days of the China trip. On Wednesday I gave the students a whirlwind introduction to Physical Distribution, covering transportation, warehousing, materials handling, customer service, and reverse logistics. It's material that usually takes me about three or four weeks to cover, and I was able to induce a round of applause from the students after finishing it in two hours. After the final lecture on Wednesday, we visited Lenovo, which purchased the IBM personal computer business about five years ago. We got to see some really innovative new computers, and many of the students were like kids in a candy store playing with some of their new offerings that were on display. That evening the students largely stayed in the hotel because they had to study for the final exam on Thursday.

After the final exam on Thursday, we went out to Hyundai's manufacturing facility near the Beijing Airport. After a brief presentation about Hyundai and its joint venture structure in China. We then toured the assembly facility where we saw cars assembled from start to finish. It was as close as many of us (me included) have ever gotten to an automobile assembly line, and it was very interesting to see the principles of lean production that we discussed in class being put to action in the plant. Unfortunately they didn't have any gift bags that included new cars for each of us. I guess they ran out of those before we arrived!


Best,
Professor Drake