Dr Reimann: Welcome to the MBA panel discussion. My name is Curt Reimann as shown here. I am holder of the Mayberry Chair here at Tech since 1996 and I’ve had the great privilege and enjoyment of being here at least twice a year since that time. One of the ideas that emerged early in this chair activity was the idea of having a board of advisors, people from different walks of life, business, industry, non-profits and so on to come give us advice, interact with students and so on. One thing has led to another and there are numerous interactions now between board members and students. All three of our board members have just come out of classes; perhaps some of you were in those classes where they shared some of their experiences with students. Later we’ll have a board discussion on trying to understand where performance management is going and what we as educators should be thinking about; putting in classes and putting in executive development programs and so on. So it’s a very diversified program. A very important part of this thing has been the MBA panel discussion which is largely free form, no real speeches and so on. Today we’re fortunate to have with us two new board members, Joe Daylor here on your left and Bill Nussbaum on your right and in the middle, a veteran performer here on our board Marie Williams. We’ll start by having each of the board members give you a little bit about their background because we feel this will give you an opportunity to see who they are and it might trigger certain questions in your mind. I think you’ll see that they have three very, very different backgrounds and I hope that would lead to stimulating discussion. I’ve been told to go alphabetically here today, so we’ll start with Joe Daylor.

Joe Daylor: Thank you Curt. It’s a pleasure to be in Tennessee. It’s much warmer than Minneapolis where I’m based. My name is Joe Daylor and I’m the Vice President of Business Process Improvement for Carlson Companies. And Carlson Companies, you probably know us by our brands: Radisson Hotels, Country Inns & Suites, TGIFriday’s. We own a large marketing company. We own some cruise ships. We also have a travel company. It’s a privately owned, family held business that if you include our franchisees, about 197,000 employees strong. My background is I started my career in the defense electronics business as a test engineer. I spent the first 20 years of my career with control data in the defense electronics component of that. A very different world in some ways than I live right now. About 20 years into my career, I made the decision; was asked to apply some of the business process improvement and quality tools so the service industry. So I spent about 2 or 3 years in the payroll/ HR business applying the quality techniques to that business and then was recruited to come over into the business I’m in right now which is; if you contrast high tech defense electronics with making hamburgers for folks on a Friday night they’re quite different, but I think the great news is the tools, the techniques, the approaches that we’ve used to improve business in the manufacturing world apply perfectly in the service business as well. We’ve really been able to create some breakthrough for our companies. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Bill Nussbaum: My name is Bill Nussbaum and I work for the Tennessee Manufacturing Extension Program. I’m headquartered out of Nashville although we have 6 centers across the state. I’m part of a bigger network The Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program which is a national program. I got my start in Navy electronics and from there I graduated from Tennessee Tech in 1980 with an electronics engineering degree. I worked in controls engineering for 6 or 7 years in a couple different industries; optical wave guide manufacturing and textiles; from there I went to DOD and did some sort of similar things with defense electronics like Joe did. I worked for the Army and the Navy in a couple different capacities and then moved to the Department of Commerce where this Manufacturing Extension Partnership is located. I spent four years with our board chair, Curt and was lucky to be able to have worked with him. He helped guide me and bring me up and nurture me. So, I then finally decided that I needed to come back to really working with the manufacturers and this gets me much closer to them so that’s where I am today.

Dr Reimann: Thanks Bill. Marie?

Marie Williams: I’m Marie Williams and I’m President and CEO of the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence and when I say that I have to sound a little bit like Prince. It’s formerly known as the Tennessee Quality Award. With that, there has been a dramatic expansion in terms of mission and branding and work in conjunction with that. I started my career, unlike the other two fine gentlemen here, I was in manufacturing but it wasn’t high tech. My association with the Department of Defense; actually I started the first fifteen years in the apparel industry and ultimately had every job from what I call from womb to tomb in conjunction with that and worked as general manager of a women’s wear apparel line, a career apparel line. So, from manufacturing to selection of styling, fabrication, delivery, merchandising for a line which was traditionally a men’s warehouse; Cuppenheimer. But with that, during my career one of the contract jobs that I did was for the Department of Defense making uniforms. So, not quite as high tech. I then took that and went to the other side of the spectrum into the service environment and with that did merchandise, information and more technology driven things with federated department stores to make sure that in a 52 chain organization the items that you needed and purchased were there. I left that with a staff of 660 at the time to open my own recruiting business, a management recruiters firm and found out the reality of; you can’t delegate, you gotta do it. And what are those universal tools? I think that’s the thing we share. From manufacturing, to service, to a small seven person organization now to a very demanding role in a not for profit organization; the tools are universal. If you get your learnings down pat then what you can do is take that knowledge to transfer. Right now I have 2000 or so volunteers that work dramatically hard for me. I do not pay them. I do not promote them. But, I do reward them and encourage them to do the best job that they can do for the right reasons and get them to come back. So it’s managing resources differently than I did in the traditional for-profit environment.