The 2012-2013 Fudan-MIT China Lab has been announced in December, 2012 and well processed through early 2013. From March 18th to March 29th, 2013. MIT Sloan students carried out on site working and mid-term presentations with Fudan students. This year, we’ve cooperated with 4 enterprises: Bosch (Suzhou), Changzhou Keteng Textile, Chai Tai Group, and Shanghai Origin Logistics. Prof. John Grant from MIT Sloan and Prof .Tzeng Chenghua from Fudan School of Management, provided detailed instruction throughout, and went to companies to listen to students’ mid-term presentations. Mid-term presentations won high appreciation from companies, and in the next five weeks, every team will carry out a further research based on feedback from companies.
1. Keteng Project
On 28th March 2013, China lab team comprised of Priyank Mathur, Rajat Sethi, IsareeLeelasuwan and Zhang Wei gave the midterm presentation on the project to Keteng Textile Co., Ltd. Representatives from Keteng Textile Co,. Ltd were Mr. Jianhua Lu, the founder of Keteng trading company, Ms. Jane He, head of international trade department, Ms. Li Li, head of human resource department and Mr. Ryan Qiu. From Fudan University were Professor Cheng Hua Tzeng and Ms.Sherry Hong, as well as, from MIT was Professor John Grant.
China-lab team had used the two weeks to work together to identify the projects through interviews with Keteng employees and analyze the secondary data from the company. The finding result was that Keteng has no clear standard in Human Resource practices, such as, employee performance evaluation and feed backs. On the other hand, the reward system was not clearly link to the employee’s performance, motivation and innovation.
Thus, China-lab team presented the problems to Keteng company and gave recommendation included the first draft of the standard employee performance evaluation sheets for each business department, so that clear standard performance evaluation system would be put in use and directly linked the employee performance to the reward system. In this way, employees would be motivated to perform better. Suggestions on initiating innovation among the employees were also given through the reference of the global company such as Google and MIT best practices, in which, employees are encouraged and supported to share ideas, reward system also established to motivate employees to innovate. First draft of employee feedback survey on performance evaluation and innovation were also given to measure the success level of project after implementation and also set up HR system that allows adjustment to the evaluation and innovation system.
Keteng company was very happy with the presentation and request China-lab team to work on the performance evaluation and innovation system into details, as well as, to extend the performance evaluation into the supervisor level too.
2. BOSCH
On the morning of March 25, 2013 the Fudan MIT China iLab Bosch team set out on a short journey to Suzhou, a city just outside of Shanghai. It was the day that the team would present their mid term presentation to the company sponsors as well as esteemed guests from across the globe. While the heavens blessed us with the finest weather seen in months, the academics blessed us with the finest audience a group of MBA’s could hope for, the esteemed, strategic master from Fudan Professor Zeng, the caring, compassionate and beautiful iLab organizer Sherry Hong, and having traveled over 5,000 miles to join us MIT’s famous Michelena. From Bosch we were joined by the master of mechanics, the emperor of improvement, the top dog of tech, TEF manager Stefan Gaebele.
The presentation was a great success and everyone was pleased. The objective of creating ideas for Bosch to save energy and reduce C02 have been accomplish. Now that we are half way through this epic journey, we open a new chapter of excitement.
Today, team Bosch is coming together, closer than before, today is the day we begin to put pen to paper to make changes that will change the world. We start small with deep analytical analysis of changes Bosch can implement to help reduce energy consumption. It’s like they say that every ocean started with a drop of water, and right now we just turned on the faucet to a better tomorrow!
3. Origin
On March 26th, the Origin Team presented their interim progress presentation to the Faculty mentors from both MIT (John Grant, Michellena Jester) and Fudan (Professor Tzeng). The purpose of the presentation was to talk about the current progress of the team, and present any research or insights that have been developed. The MIT Team arrived in Shanghai on the 16th, and the Origin Team had their face-to-face meeting in the client’s office on the18th. Throughout their time here, the team has met almost every day on campus to share ideas, and work on research and analysis for the project. Throughout the many days of brainstorming, the team has formed a strong bond over many shared meals, and each has learned how to collaborate with the others to work most efficiently.
At the progress presentation, the team talked about their initial thought process in devising a new business plan for Origin and explained their list of explored ideas. They also focused on one main idea as the focal point for the project going forward and outlined: what it is, why it’s a good idea, how they came to that conclusion, and what are their next steps. At the conclusion of the presentation, the faculty mentors asked many clarifying questions of both the Team and the Origin Representative to better understand client needs and project scope. The faculty mentors then offered their advice to the team about how they feel is the best way to proceed. The time was very useful for the Origin team to have everyone on the same page, and to clear up any questions or concerns before moving forward to the final deliverable. It was also a nice time to catch up with everyone, and allow the clients to see the entire team (both faculty and students) that is working to deliver best recommendations.
For the remainder of the week, the team will continue to discuss further plans for work on the project. The goal for the next few days is to have a streamlined work plan for how they will split up the work flow going forward.
4. CTG Agro
The interim report presentation was scheduled on March 29th from 10:00-11:45. The presentation took place in Room 301 of Star building. There are three attendees from the host company (CP Group): Mr. Xue (Senior Vice President), Mr. Wang (Manager of Beijing Training Center), and Amy Zhou (Coordinator). Also, the mentors from MIT and Fudan University both attended the meeting.
Below are the major outcomes of the interim report presentation:
Clearly communicate the project progress to the host company
The group presentation lasted about 40 minutes. It was divided into four parts:
Part 1: Introduction of the project scope and research methodologies. This part shows what they are working on and how they are going to conduct the project.
Part 2: Review of the research findings and share the comparisons made between the three corporate universities they studied previously.
Part 3: Analysis of the Cixi project. This part was designed to give proposals regarding the strategic direction of the school, the school organizational structure. It also includes other six relevant aspects about school operations: curriculum, staffing, funding, performance analysis, enrollment and measurement. Each aspect was elaborated with our observations, the proposals based upon the research and analysis, and the applicable implementation plans.
Part 4: Highlight the critical proposals and make a summary of the presentation content. This part was pretty short but it was good to give audience a quick review of what they have accomplished in the previous phases
Receive positive comments from the host company
The attendees said the presentation was:
1.informative: There was a lot of information covered in the presentation
2.creative: Some of the ideas presented had never been exposed to them before
3.holistic: it’s a holistic framework as eight different aspects have being looked at Comments given by Mr. Xue:
“If 100 points is used for best performance, I think this presentation deserves 100 points”.
Seek approval to proceed to the next phase
The team has listed the following things they are going do in the last phase:
1.Incorporate client feedback
2.Conduct supplementary research
3.Refine recommendations
4.Report and presentation finalization
Mr. Xue said he would like to share the meeting outcomes with his team in Beijing. They will have a further discussion then list advice/suggestions for us. Details are expected to be seen soon and will maintain constant communication with them.
