My graduate school advisor at UNC-Chapel Hill, Ron Pannesi, sadly passed away in June. I owe much of my success as an academic to Ron, as he was a key individual in my ability to finish a PhD at a very difficult time.

Completing a PhD at UNC was no joke. It required taking classes in advanced Operations Research (linear programming, simulation, optimization, etc.) statistics (design of experiments, path analytics, structural equations), and research methods (qualitative research, theory building, etc.). Then the comprehensive exam was a two day ordeal, in which ANYTHING could be put on the exam. I stuggled through these classes, and managed to squeak through my comps.

I somehow managed to make it through the first two years, but the most difficult part was still ahead. The dissertation. And this is where Ron came in. I was sitting in the faculty lounge one day, moping and feeling sorry for myself, when Ron came over and sat next to me. Anyone who knew Ron, knew how gregarious he was. “HOW’S IT GOING?” he would say, with a laugh and a smile. When I told him of my struggles to come up with a dissertation topic, he looked at me and said “We need to get you out into the real world. You can’t see what is going on by sitting in an office running mind games!”

Never a truer word was spoken. Before long, we were talking every other day, and one of the research questions he asked me, which proved to be fortuitous, was the following: “What are the components of lead time for make to order products?” Make to order products include products that are customized for a customer, including such items as furniture, cell phone towers, bulldozers, industrial computer hardware, etc. In other words, he challenged me to understand what the proportion of lead time that customers must wait was actually “value-added time”, which was the time that a product was actually being worked on, as opposed to sitting in a queue, waiting for suppliers to deliver parts, rework after a defect was discovered, etc.

So this question set me on my way. Over the period of a year, I travelled to more than 50 manufacturing plants, and collected data on lead times. How did I get to 50? Because every time I returned from my travels, Ron would ask the same question: “What is “n””…. n referring to the number of data points in my sample that I needed to reach a statistically representative sample. Along the way, I visited furniture plants, garment manufacturers, computer manufacturers, industrial equipment manufacturers, telecom server manufacturers, and many more. And along the way, I really got my education… by talking to shop floor workers, planners, VP’s, material managers, buyers, purchasing managers, and many more. At the end of each visit, I would type up my notes, recalling every conversation I had that day. Ron was right. Getting into the field was the best thing I could have done at that state in my academic career, and produced a wealth of qualitative and quantitive data, that I leveraged for not only my dissertation, but several publications afterwards. And I learned the value of executive engagement. I would have never taken this route, if not for Ron.

Taking this route was not without risk. Ron was not a “well-published” academic, but came from the school of hard knocks (Michigan State University). He led my committee along with Steve Chapman, another one of the MSU “Four Horsemen”, all executives that went through the PhD program together… At the time, people were quick to tell me that “You will never get any empirical research published” (!). Yeah. Not kidding. But I figured if I couldn’t publish anything that involved real-world data and insights, than I was in the school of business!

I actually ended up as one of the first newly minted PhD’ graduates in operations management that utilized data collected in the field. This was really fortuitous…As it turned out, my analysis found that proportion of value added time for MTO products, on average, was only 5%! And the bulk of the leadtime, not surprisingly, was for supplier leadtimes, which often extended weeks. This led me to explore this further, as the field of purchasing was in a nascent stage of academic study, which in turn led me to the broader field of supply chain management. A gold mine for academic research!

Ron continued to support me after I left UNC, and we continued to stay in touch until a few years ago, after he retired. He helped me land a job at Michigan State, which led to my engagement with Bob Monczka, the leading academic expert on purchasing, who involved me in the Global Electronic Benchmarking Network, where I continued to learn more from senior executives pushing the boundaries on new supply management strategies. Once I started at NC State, he would drive up and teach undergrad classes at State for a year after retiring, but the drive from Wilmington proved to be too much over time. But I will always remember him, as well as his good friend, John Buccini, a physicist, who he loved to hang out with. Ron was an incredible educator, a great guy, and an incredible mentor. Thank you Ron… I will always remember you. And you are missed.