2018 CLGO Students of Antai of Jiaotong University Successfully Completed the "MIT Curriculum Module" Study Tour

On July 6th, 2019, 34 CLGO students arrived in Boston, under the leadership of associate Professor Du Suguo of Antai College of Economics and Management and teacher Lin Guifeng of MBA Center, and received a warm reception from MIT LGO Student Union. CLGO's seven-day study tour program at MIT started.

The MIT LGO team has prepared large gift packs for students who have come from far away, including guidelines for Boston’s local transportation cards, schedules, and city living facilities recommendations. The MIT LGO Student Union arranged a wealth of city tours. On the morning of July 7, the MIT LGO team arranged a city tour of Duck Tour Boston. In the afternoon we visited the unique Museum of Modern Science and Technology in Boston, a city of science and technology. Many of the scientific and technological achievements are from MIT's labs. MIT is also a special business card of Boston.On the morning of July 8, Karen Zheng, an associate professor graduated from Tsinghua University and the Sloan School of Management of Stanford University, shared her research achievements on supply chain information transparency and corporate environment and social responsibility for CLGO students. Through specific cases of clothing, food and automobile industries, she elaborated the importance of supply chain information transparency to consumers and society, and further extended the relationship between product information disclosure and consumer behavior, as well as the research on customer satisfaction. Students can benefit a lot from the research content in just two hours. She answered the questions asked by CLGO students in the question section, which enabled the students to have a new understanding of the application of the consumption behavior analysis and customer satisfaction in operation and management, and expanded our horizons.

Later, the CLGO students and teachers, under the leadership of Dr Joshua Jacobs, the LGO project leader, visited the Nano Laboratory at the MIT campus center, which is one of MIT's most important lab buildings, to provide technical support for nano-related research activities carried out by MIT and surrounding researchers. With world-class equipment and scientific research environment, the research and practice fields cover the fields of renewable energy, pharmaceutical, new materials, advanced production, high-speed computer and environmental cleaning, which have made outstanding contributions to the nanotechnology progress of MIT and even the whole world. After the one-hour visit to the lab, CLGO students also entered MIT campus and first came into contact with MIT's ancient and modern campus culture.

On the evening of July 8th, MIT LGO held a grand welcome dinner for CLGO students and teachers in the banquet hall on the 7th floor of Samberg Conference Center. Thomas Roamer, Director of LGO Program, and Mr. Lin Guifeng, teacher of CLGO Program gave speeches respectively, wishing the exchange event a success. CLGO students presented small gifts of exquisite bookmarks to LGO students. The dinner created a communication platform for CLGO and LGO students, which made us closer and enhanced our friendship. It laid a good foundation for the cooperation of the courses in the next few days.

On the morning of July 9th, John Hart, Brian Anthony and Duane Bonding, three professors in the engineering field of MI TLGO project, had in-depth discussions with CLGO students on three topics: additive manufacturing, intelligent digital manufacturing and industrial big data, and the application of machine learning in manufacturing. John Hart extended the wide application of 3D printing technology in manufacturing field by introducing the industry background of additive and additive manufacturing, and predicted the prospect of 3D printing in the future through a large number of case applications in consumer electronics, automobile, aviation and other industries. Brian Anthony deeply explored the yesterday, today and tomorrow of manufacturing industry from the hot topic of intelligent manufacturing of industrial big data, and extended the attention and research on the IOT: Internet of Things. Duane Boning's course is divided into two parts. In the morning, he introduced the application fields of research direction, general situation, and algorithm of machine learning, and so on. In the afternoon, together with LGO students, he discussed his latest topics and research achievements, as well as the opportunities and challenges of machine learning in manufacturing. The three professors' lectures are full of MIT's strong engineering characteristics and also reflect the importance of modern engineering technology in the operation and management of manufacturing enterprises.

From July 9th to July 11th, Professor Leigh Hafrey of the Sloan School of Management taught three content-rich leadership and organizational change courses to LGO and CLGO students. Professor Leigh Hafrey studied comparative literature at Harvard when he was a student, got his PhD at Yale, and then taught at Harvard and MIT. When he taught business ethics and business communication courses at Sloan School of Management, he often used novels, movies, and even fairy tales as case for analysis. During the three-day course, he had a discussion of human nature and morality with the words of Confucius, a pioneer of ancient Chinese culture, and then led to thinking about business ethics and morality through the management case of Royal Dutch Shell, which led to a new interpretation of the "the self" spirit. The two cultures of the East and the West collided violently in the classroom, and Professor Leigh had a full and in-depth communication with everyone. In the following courses, the full interpretation of the thoughts of Confucius and Mencius in the western perspectives and the understanding and discussion of Hao Jingfang's Folding Beijing enabled everyone to have a thorough understanding of the living conditions and ideology of all kinds of people in society, thus led to the study that how people and enterprises should succeed and how to deal with the relationships between people, environment, enterprises, society and government in business practice, which has aroused in-depth thinking. Professor Leigh also patiently answered questions for the students. He often showed a sentence or two in Chinese, and the atmosphere of communication was very relaxed and pleasant.

On the morning of July 10th and 11th, there was the competition session for the course module, hosted by Thomas Roamer, Director of the LGO Program. LGO and CLGO formed a four-person team respectively to conduct a simulation competition of the actual business issues on the LittleField Simulation Platform developed by Stanford University. LGO and CLGO had nine teams participating in the competition respectively and the competition problem was an actual production operation management problem. According to the demand trend of the existing data change, the income needed to be maximized in a limited time. After two rounds of intense competition, Team3 of LGO won the first place, Dragon Team 2019 of CLGO won the third place by a narrow margin, and all teams successfully completed the competition. At the same time of completing the competition, everyone has realized the rapid change of information. The business world is like a battlefield. In reality, the operational decisions will be more complicated. However, they remain essentially the same despite all apparent changes. Proficient mastery of basic knowledge is the cornerstone of solving any difficult problems.

On the afternoon of July 11th, CLGO teachers and students finished our courses at Sloan School of Management and came to Harvard campus for an hour’s tour. The students took pictures with the founder statue of Harvard University, John Harvard, and stopped at Harvard campus to enjoy the atmosphere of the world's first-ranked university.

During the company's visit, CLGO teachers and students spent two days visiting Boston Design Center, Tulip and PTC. At Boston Design Center, we visited Artaic, a company founded by Ted Acworth, an MBA graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management, and met with Ms. Liu Xin, founder and CEO of InTeahouse, a financing technology incubator that promoted Artaic’s $2 million investment of Innocence Holding Group and Lesso of China, and Ms. Zeng Xiahui, vice president of Global Business Development Department. Artaic is a "large-scale customized" mosaic intelligent manufacturing company, which is committed to applying its custom-designed mosaic antique tiles to manufacturing and construction installations. Artaic's CAD software, funded and developed by the National Science Foundation of the United States, achieves a high efficiency of the design process and samples can be obtained on the same day as the renderings are completed. Just as custom printing technology revolutionized the carpet industry more than 30 years ago, Artaic has successfully infiltrated its products into the commercial and residential markets through its collaboration with many high-end customers such as Ritz-Carlton, Bellagio, Google and MIT. Ted Acworth, Artaic's founder and CEO, has attracted the attention of all the students with a wealth of knowledge and legendary entrepreneurial experience.

On the morning of July 12th, under the leadership of LGO project director Thomas Roamer and Professor John Carrier of Sloan School of Management, CLGO teachers and students arrived at Tulip Company for a visit. Tulip Company is a digital factory solutions provider whose core products are digital production line solutions based on sensor and Internet of Things technology. Before visiting the company's products, Professor John Carrier first explained the importance of data prediction and analysis, as well as what the future world data means to humans, taking the construction of Egyptian pyramids and the rescue of Brazilian offshore oil platforms in 2001 as examples. During the visit, Tulip co-founder Natan Linder demonstrated the workflow of the digital Internet of Things production line and the effect of data visualization. After lunch at Tulip, we arrived at the last stop of the company’s visit in the afternoon--the PTC company (Parametric Technology Corporation) in Boston's urban port, which is a Nasdaq-listed company founded in Boston in 1985, caused a great shock in the field of the mechanical CAD/CAM/CAE market in 1989 and its sales and net profit have increased for 45 consecutive quarters. The current stock market value has exceeded $7 billion, and its annual revenue has exceeded US $1 billion, and has become the most representative software company in CAID/CAD/CAE/CAM/PDM field. Dr. Jordan Cox, the company's senior vice president, introduced PTC's main products and solutions, and focused on the applications of new technologies such as AR and AI in enterprise digital production solutions. In the following exhibition hall visit, the students experienced the application of AR technology in various industrial scenes, and had in-depth exchanges with the engineers and managers of the company, and introduced the enterprise visit activities in a pleasant exchange.

On the evening of July 12th and the noon of July 13th, LGO students held two unique farewell activities for CLGO students on the lawn of LGO Student Home and MIT Student Activity Center. We had a good time together at LGO Student Home and shared the unique party game of MIT. At noon on July 13th, we experienced the traditional American BBQ together, talked about friendship on the lawn of MIT Student Activity Center and looked forward to meeting again in China in the future.

After a short week's study at MIT, I believe that every CLGO student who has come to MIT will have a very deep understanding. The famous words of MIT's "Study Hard, Play Harder" are reflected in this visit to MIT. The warm reception from LGO students and project teams makes us all look forward to the reunion in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. We will continue to deepen the friendship between MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Hope that our tomorrow will be better!

Writer: 2018 class    Liu Zhenghui