Some supply chain humour before Christmas, 10 reasons why your holiday gift will be delivered late (by Kinaxis)

10. Santa made a tactical error in choosing a "fly by night" 3PL instead of his usual crew of reindeer.

9. Santa refused to go through the body scanner and the TSA is still patting him down (he's a big guy you know...)

8. Santa outsourced to China and lead times have ballooned - it will be a "Christmas in July" scenario for many!

7. Global warming has advanced to the point that the North Pole melted.

6. Pixie dust is on allocation.

5. The fireplace in Santa's North Pole residence was mistakenly filled with Kindles instead of kindling.

4. Santa's visibility only extends to the bottom of his eggnog glass.

3. Santa bought ERP...and is still implementing.

2. The “naughty” and “nice” data fell into an Excel abyss. Guess which list you ended up on?

1. Santa told key members of his manufacturing team, "Go elf yourself."

Merry Christmas!!!!

https://community.kinaxis.com/index.jspa

CEMS MIM Graduation and Annual Events 2010 in Rotterdam

This year´s CEMS Annual Events in Rotterdam was very special for me because I have finally obtained my CEMS Master´s in International Management diploma. Cold and snowy weather conditions could not spoil perfect meeting with my friends who have mostly graduated as well.

Great experience from TEDxPrague conference

My first visit of a TEDx event was definitely worth it. I went there thx to my boyfriend and my employer Cisco (main sponsor of the event), nice combination.

Overall a lot of great speekers and topics, good organization given the fact that number of participants was twice higher than expected, and I´ve written down a lot of interesting and innovative thoughts.

Some ideas or facts I really found interesting:

• Tomáš Baťa was criticised for giving high responsible jobs to very young people.
• You can start being entrepreneur at every age, even at 65, Mrs. Garlikova is a good example of this.
• Managers get hired thanks to their education, knowledge and experience, but they get fired due to lack of social skills and inability to work with their teams.

• Most important decisions in our lives are done through emotions (think of various situations yourself: how have you decided about your field of study, first job, future husband/wife, name for your children, location of your house).
• Gallup study: 80% of employed people do not like tasks in their jobs or their job overall, their life is shaped by the very known abb. TGIF.
• Companies sometimes treat their employees as their parents did when they were small children (do not do this, do not dress like this, you have to ask before you do that...), interesting paradigm :-)....vs. concept of free companies becoming more popular nowadays /hiring self-managing individuals, etc.
• Stress and learning are two basic reflexes or reactions keeping us alive. People usually cannot learn anything properly when they are stressed because these two reflexes work in different situations.
• It´s important to give children chance to lead something on their own and to success or learn from mistakes because they are the future leaders.
• Usage of alternative education sources will definitely grow (google, wiki, blogs, e-learnings). Parents will try to look for good education for their children outside of the old education system.
• Great idea: Granny cloud - retired women teaching kids online 1-2 hours per day.
• Micro-loans in developing countries have 90% payback rate. People are willing to take them even with huge interest. Micro-savings are banking products with big market potential. In some countries, collectors of these savings come every day to collect tiny amount of money because if people kept the money even few days, they would spend it on something else than they are saving for.

And there was more...this is just overview of what got stuck in my head :-).

One thing where my opinion is different from one of  the presenters:

• "When teaching small children: marks and grades make children feel bribed for learning stuff. Schools transform children in little bribers".  This is too strong statement for me. I definitely do not believe that grades mean everything, however people are compared to each other everywhere they go (school, university, labor market, employment, family, relationships). And children should learn that sometimes others can be better than them and they should feel proud of extraordinary achievements by obtaining nice evaluation.

http://www.tedxprague.cz/

My article from Reflex got into the recently published travellers´ book

Today I picked up a package at my post office and I found this book: http://www.knizniweb.cz/knihy/89753-na-vandru-s-reflexem-v.html.

Opening it I found out that my article about the CEMS internship got published in a new book from Mr. Zvelebil who writes articles based on interviews with various travellers, publishes them in the Czech social magazine Reflex in his special section and occasionally as wider collection also in a book-form.

My article desribing work experience from Bonn can be found on page 63 :-).

You can buy the book at http://www.knizniweb.cz/knihy/89753-na-vandru-s-reflexem-v.html. for the best price. This one offers articles from Ethiopia, Ghana, Germany, Austria, Kongo, Sudan, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda and Vietnam. Very interesting range. I am looking forward to be reading all of them.

How to get my book with free shipping?

Just click here: http://bit.ly/cUwI7e

 

Summer 2010

This was my first summer which I spent together with my boyfriend Lukas, as full-time employee of Cisco and in non-student status, my book about CPFR was published, I tried to prepare sushi for the first time…what else is new? Oh yeh, I celebrated my first 25 years on the world with few decent parties including my family, friends, colleagues from work, etc. Of course, since it´s summer time, some other parties, trips and also well-deserved holiday abroad were part of it. I will put together a diary for our trip through Bulgaria and Istanbul, it will be published at http://www.ontheroad.to/ and through this blog as well.

My 25 birthday celebration:

Me 25 and my grandmother 80! Plus my sister 19 and fresh university student of medicine!

I got my first Porsche from my dad – ok, it´s made of chocolate, but it´s a good start :-)

Me and my mom – daughter 25 and mom 50!

This present from my mom was a memorial plaque to honour Obama´s visit in Prague and says: Yes, we can.  But the really funny thing was the playing box where it was placed.

 Bike trip with Cisco colleagues…

 Beach volleyball with Cisco colleagues…

My book has been published

My book is online and available for sale at amazon.com  - http://is.gd/ex6IF. I just found out today because my mom discovered this for me :-).

 

Product Description

Collaboration among businesses is currently considered to be driver for growth, cost reduction and innovation in many industries. Collaboration together with technology and visibility is the way how to improve complex multinational supply chains. This publication describes new concepts of collaborative planning in supply chains. The theoretical part depicts developments of supply chain planning from 60s until recent time and shows possible solutions of common supply chain planning problems in form of modern collaborative practices (e.g. Quick Response, Continuous Replenishment, Vendor-managed Inventory, Efficient Consumer Response). In further parts, the work mainly focuses on CPFR (Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenisment) concept. There is a separate chapter devoted to benchmarks and pilots of CPFR. In addition to that, practical research of one particular example of CPFR implementation was conducted in cooperation with companies T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom AG) and Nokia. Results of this research can be found in the last chapter.

My new activities - barbecue and inline skating :-)

Hello. This summer, I have tried two of very popular activities, those being one active and one lazy sport :-). Firstly, we have bought a new grill with Lukas. Small, transportable, classy american grill, brand Weber. We have already tried it out several times and invited also some friends to taste some of our outputs :-). So far so good, only once, we burnt one piece of cheese which smelled badly but the meat was always very good.

The second new activity I occasionally undertake is roller skating. The roller skates was a birthday gift from Lukas and I also chose the complete set of various protectors which already proved to be useful things. My record is 25 km route with 1 fall only which is not any extreme level of performance but anyhow I am proud of it and it´s been fun. Few weeks back, we were skating with my friends in Nymburk and Podebrady along the river Labe. I also bought a new shock-proof and water-proof camera, and we tried it out for the first time during this trip.

Visit to International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary

This year for the first time, I decided to visit the famous film festival in Karlovy Vary and to use for this purpose two free public holiday days in July. We went with my sis and enjoyed the atmosphere of queueing for several movies, had some drinks in between and saw few famous people. The star of this year was Jude Law and we managed to get in to the movie where he was having a small speech and ceremony. Overall the festival is very crowded and one has to develop the best strategy to get to as many movies as possible. Next time we would be much smarter :-). Anyway, in 2 days we managed to see 5 movies for 150 CZK each of us which I judge as really good. 

CEMS Gala Dance 2010

It has been my tradition to describe major CEMS socializing events of the semester. The spring semester 2010 should not be any exception. Although I am not student anymore...sadly for me...I stil enjoy attending these events. CEMS Gala Dance was organized by CEMS Club Prague already in April but as I was going through my posts and pictures tonight I realized that evidence of this event has been missing on my blog....so here it is :-). Cool stylish evening with buffet, drinks and dancing lessons, nice meetup of cemsies on top of that of course.

Barcamps...an interesting meeting hub of internet, social media, startup fans and geeks

Hi, after attending the second barcamp with my boyfriend, I decided to post something about those events on my blog because it has been always a very interesting and enriching experience. In January 2010, we were on the first barcamp in CZ which was organized in Vsetin by local entrepreneurs and internet fans. It was a great meeting of interesting people and I really enjoyed the whole weekend of presentations and talks. I was in particular astonished by the high ratio of people having Macs and iPhones. I learned about a lot of interesting websites, intiatives, projects and after coming back from this weekend, I have established my twitter account as well (@olinkany). After-party in Vsetin was really nice as well :-).

 My second barcamp experience was last weekend in Vienna where we went with Lukáš to try out an international barcamp. Everything was in German which again refreshed my vocabulary and speaking a bit and we attended just few sessions about coworking, social media usage and own branding, fashion on internet and web-analytics. It was again Apple paradise, the only difference was, people were also using iPads there :-). Since the weather was nice, we also enjoyed some sightseeing in Vienna City Center. I love this City, not as much as Prague, but similarly :-) ... because it brought me a lot of nice memories during the semester I spent there in winter 2007/2008.

Speech from My Graduation Published Online

Greetings to everyone. I have finally uploaded the speech from my graduation ceremony for those who were interested to listen but could not attend on March 12. I hope you will enjoy it.

http://vimeo.com/11994877 

 Just a little reminder, the speech is in Czech.

Edinburgh calling

On the first weekend of May I arranged a trip to Edinburgh in Scotland to visit my friend Lucy. I flew with a friend of mine Martin and our both flights went ok despite the recent activities of the Islandic volcano whose name is so hard to write or pronounce.

The temperature in Edinburgh was around 10 degrees lower than in Prague but that has not discouraged us from exploring beauties of the Scottish capital. We were impressed mainly by the crowds in and atmosphere of local pubs. In the restaurant called "Standing Order", you order and pay your food at the bar and tell the waiter the number of the table and in few minutes, they would bring you the meal. Interesting and quite efficient pub supply chain :-). Well, I am just joking.

Edinburgh has for sure a lot to offer. I was most impressed by the really green lawns and grass, plus at this time of a year, flowers and trees in parks are blossoming and the city looked perfect with old British houses around. There is great view from Calton Hill where we spent Friday evening observing and ancient fire festival tradition.

On Saturday we visited the coast and the beach. It was probably the coldest weather at the seaside which I´ve ever experiences but I found some huge shells which improved my mood very much. Then we had a small lunch in a nice restaurant near the beach.

A funny story ended our Saturday evening when I pronounced the name of our street totally differently to the taxi driver and he took us on other side of the city. So ok, the drive cost us a bit more :-). Lucy likes it in Edinburgh very much and I do not wonder about it. It is a nice place if you don´t mind bit of rain and cold wind...:-). Although when we landed back in Prague on Sun evening, it was raining while it was sunny before the plane took off from Edinburgh.

My recent activities...

Hello again after some time. I am getting used to my new assignment at Cisco Emerging Markets Partner Organization while undertaking other activities in my leisure time....well, as usual :-). The team in my initiative is growing and I am learning fast every day which is good.

I have again attended some CEMS events during the last few months, including traditional CEMS drinks, CEMS Team Building in Krkonose, CEMS Gala event. One special piece has been the CEMS Theatre, a play called Happy Prince from Oscar Wilde, performed by CEMSies. The video from this world first premiere can be seen right here . I have contributed with little piano accompaniment.

Apart from this, I am trying to be in close touch with my family. The last two months were full of big anniversaries when my mom celebrated her 50th birthday and my grandmother her 75th. After me celebrating my 25th this year in August, this big chain of our anniversaries will be over :-).

I am meeting my friends often and we have spent some nice moments together within last weeks, including this one:

Last but not least I spend a lot of time with my bf Lukáš who is great support of my out of work life and brings balance into everything around.

I am also trying to upload the speech from my graduation ceremony to be available for preview. However it is not ready yet and should be done in a short time.

Graduation Ceremony at VŠE, Prague

I really enjoyed both my graduation ceremony as well as the speech on behalf of graduating students. In addtion to that, my sister had her prom ball in the evening, so March 12 was a busy day and I am sure it has made our parents proud of us.

New full time job, new destination...Cisco Systems

On Monday, February 8, 2010, I started my first full time assignment after finishing the Master´s degree. I have chosen this job because it offered me to gain a lot of experience in starting a new worldwide initiative within the large American IT corporation. Actually, I like this company, because it is nearly as old as I am. Cisco was founded in 1984 at the Campus of the Stanford university by two students who invented the first switching system enabling interoperability of multiple operating systems. 

Cisco is betting on collaboration and that is definitely something I like about working there because I can make use of their own collaboration tools also internally.  The scope of my work is very international which is good, given the fact I studied International trade and International Management :-).

My position is called Program Analyst and I am responsible for monitoring a new incentive program for Cisco´s partners in the Emerging markets. So far I have been enjoying revealing complexity of another big corporation. Let´s hope I will keep up doing my job well and in sufficient pace.

Work hard, organize yourself, enjoy your free time and do not loose your motivation.

With this post, I would like to encourage all colleagues, friends and students in their career efforts. The time when you end your studies and decide about the course of your future steps is a critical period. Often we dream about some particular job. This ideal one does not have to be available on the job market at the time when we search for it. And then we have to compromise and find something else. It is important not to loose the motivation. We have to use all our credits, strenghts and knowledge. I went through some rough decision time in the past few months, dozens of interviews, tests, applications... I thought a lot about everything. My decision time is over, I am starting at my new destination on Monday.

P.S. Prague in winter is really beautiful.

Ing. Olga Nýdlová

So this is it...the end of my university studies...everything is finished, passed. I successfully defended my master thesis elaborated in cooperation with T-Mobile and Nokia.

There were some attempts to stop me from my success but fortunately they failed to succeed. In June on the way to my final exam, my tram hit a police car. This January when I went to defend my master thesis, my tram stopped because another tram in front of us had some unknown accident. So the result: I came always little bit later but in fact always in time :-).

The Graduation ceremony is scheduled to March 12, 2010 and I am preparing to be the student speaker.

Well, the 27 January, 2010 was a big day. Olinka becoming ing. CEMS MIM, celebrating 2 month anniversary with the new boyfriend, and Apple published its brand new iPad device :-). This is just ......wait for it....legendary.