ANN ARBOR—The Fourth Annual Tauber Community Service Day brought students, faculty, staff, and members of the U-M Tauber Institute for Global Operations' Industry Advisory Board together to give back as only they can.  Teams comprised of Tauber students, faculty, staff, and industry leaders worked with four SE Michigan organizations chosen for their contributions to their communities.  By providing insights to improve the organizations' operations, Tauber teams help them to leverage their resources to maximize their good work.

Clean Energy Coalition (CEC)
Clean Energy Coalition advocates for less energy usage and for using more renewable resources in the community.  Tauber's volunteer team worked to optimize CEC’s project tracking and proposal process.

FAR Conservatory
FAR Conservatory provides creative arts therapy and recreation services for children and adults with mental, physical, and emotional impairments.  Tauber's volunteer team worked on a new Facebook profile to help promote the organization, and examined other electronic media to support FAR's donor tracking and proposal process.

View photos here. 

ConKerr Cancer
Conkerr Cancer provides colorful hand-made pillowcases to children who are hospitalized for cancer treatment.  Tauber's volunteer team worked to streamline this 100% volunteer effort to raise the spirits of these young patients.

Recycle Ann Arbor's ReUse Center
The ReUse Center is a thrift store with more than 20,000 square feet of store space.  Tauber's volunteer team worked to optimize the inventory management of the book, sporting goods, and A/V sections of the store in order to reduce theft, repurpose wasted space, and improve customer experience.

Win-Win Arrangement

Tauber's Community Service Day infuses fresh ideas and enthusiasm into the operations of area organizations.  And students find that the opportunity to serve not only offers them a closer look inside key SE Michigan organizations, it also allows them to solve real-world problems using the Lean Operations concept.  Rick Jarman, President and CEO of NCMS, is a member of the Tauber Industry Advisory Board (IAB) and a past Tauber Institute Team Project Sponsor. “I have seen the immense value these talented students give to solving real-world corporate problems.  We immediately jumped at the chance to engage them once more during a community service day,” he said.

By working with members of the community organizations, IAB mentors and Tauber staff, students are able to quickly come up with solutions that have real promise. “All of the students were very interactive, shared great ideas with the team and really wanted to learn more about our issues and come up with a specific plan of action.  The mentors of the Tauber Institute were essential to asking clarifying questions and steering the team towards other thoughts/options without guiding them to their conclusions.  We were very impressed with all of the students’ knowledge and enthusiasm,” Jarman added.

“The Student Advisory Board has been working hard to enrich the Tauber experience and this is a wonderful capstone event. The service day is an opportunity to network with leaders across industries in our IAB and serve the community by completing a single day operations project,” said Theresa Ceccarelli of the Tauber Institute.

For more information about Community Service Day, contact Al Woodliff, Tauber Industry Co-Director, at 734-763-4160 or [email protected].

About Tauber Institute for Global Operations

The Tauber Institute for Global Operations is a joint venture between the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the College of Engineering, and numerous industry partners to facilitate cross-disciplinary education in global operations management. In addition to a broad array of core and elective courses, the innovative LeadershipAdvantage^SM Program provides students with the tools to ascend to major operations leadership roles. Well-designed and managed team projects form the cornerstone of the Tauber Institute experience and allow students to apply their knowledge to real world settings. The Tauber Institute is an inaugural recipient of the UPS George D. Smith Prize for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics. http://www.tauber.umich.edu

Contact:
Theresa Ceccarelli 734-647-0308 [email protected]