As the supply planning manager for several production lines in Windsor Locks, Conn., that run 24/7, John Boullie puts his Kelley Direct degree to work on a daily basis.
However, it wasn’t until Hurricane Sandy struck that he came to truly appreciate the skills he gained in the school’s Global Supply Chain Management program.
“We had to shut operations down entirely when the governor of Connecticut closed the highways,” says Boullie. “When we reopened a day and a half later, we had to manually coordinate our just in time raw material deliveries with each supplier and look at how the unplanned shutdown would affect our promised ship dates to customers.”
Complicating matters even further was the extensive destruction found in the ports of New York and New Jersey.
“The ports were closed for more than a week with no power and a great backlog of traffic,” he says.
Keeping his plants running and shipments moving in the midst of such chaos was no easy task. To stay on track, Boullie relied on his Kelley Direct education.
“The process mapping skills I learned in Prof. Lummus’ class allowed me and my team to outline and focus on the pieces of the chain that were the most critical and needed the most attention,” Boullie says. “I even pulled out some of the Excel files we worked on to help me maximize our production output and get the most shipments out in the smallest amount of time!”
Things are getting back to normal now, but Boullie continues to be thankful for his Kelley degree.
“Getting a Global Supply Chain Management degree from Kelley Direct was a great decision for me,” he says. “I’ve applied many of the more unique tools and concepts I learned at Kelley to my work here.”
