Participants blog: The road to graduation

Soon participant Hugo Ouwehand will graduate the Executive Master of Operations and Supply Chain Excellence (MOS). But first he has to write his thesis. The coming months Hugo will write about the process. In his first post Hugo introduces himself.

Graduation

The ceremony to conclude 18 months of study, classes, writing assignments, asking yourself if you did your best, waiting for grades, having fun with classmates, exchanging experiences, and learning in the process. The only thing between that glorious moment and the present is conducting scientific research and writing the master thesis. On a regular basis I will share the progress, difficulties, achievements, doubts, and successes I will without a doubt encounter on the road to graduation. 

Me

I am a 45 year old male, married, 1 daughter, currently unemployed and most of the time I live in a caravan these days. Where did it go wrong? It didn’t, it’s all part of a plan. After receiving my diploma at Nijenrode (BBA) back in 1990, I started what was to become a divers, international career  string of jobs, from forklifts to fish to flowers to fish and forklifts again, from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, from assistant-trainee to managing director, from Europe to Africa to the Middle East to the high seas of the Pacific.  It was in my last job that I realised I shouldn’t ignore that feeling of wanting to expand my knowledge and specialize in what I do best: Operations and Supply Chain management.

The study

So I decided to enlist in the MOS-2 programme offered by Tias. 11 Modules of  state-of-the-art topics, interesting lectures combining theory and practice, fellow students challenging me to make that extra effort, the excitement of receiving grades, the practical assignments, I never regretted having decided to take up this study, which, by the way, I am funding myself.

The research

Thanks to an introduction by one of the professors (Thanks Tom!) I found a welcoming placement at a transport and warehousing company in FMCG, serving retail and wholesale DC’s within the Benelux. My research focusses on the empty kilometres driven within the network. How many? Where? and most important, how to avoid them.

I hope to keep you updated regularly, once every three weeks. Next time we’ll talk data.