The Tauber Summer Projects

Hi all,

I want to share a few things about the Tauber Institute's summer projects. All Tauber students participate in an intensive 14 week paid summer internship with a team of 2-4 students. These internships allow the students to apply what they have learned in school in a real life setting. The companies love having a Tauber team come in because of the fresh perspective and knowledge that it brings to the company. The projects are not your typical internship, but rather a high impact, potentially multi-million dollar savings project. I was draw to the projects because of the quality of the companies sponsoring them.

A wide range of companies from many different industries sponsor projects, here is a list of some of the sponsors from the last few years. A full list of sponsors can be found here.

• Alcoa
• Boeing
• BorgWarner
• Cardinal Health
• Cummins
• UPS
• Cisco
• Microsoft
• Pfizer
• Raytheon
• Whirlpool
• PepsiCo
• Ford
• General Motors
• and many others

The projects typically focus on an issue in the company that is of major strategic importance. I am greatly looking forward to my project with Cardinal Health this summer. The project that we

are working on is related to optimizing inventory levels for the company. I am excited for the opportunity that I will have and the potential impact that I will be able to make.

One of the scariest parts of the process for me was the project matching process. The process works by having students interview with five companies. Students obtain interviews by being “close listed” (the company really likes you and/or your resume and invites you to interview with them) or by bidding an allotment of your set amount of points on an interview. After you have your five interviews you rank the companies in order from 1-5 (in order of which you would like the most). The companies also rate all interviewees as an A, B, or C (in order of who they want the most). Then the Tauber staff put all of this data into a linear optimization program which spits out a combination of students and companies that attempts to "minimize dissatisfaction". Of course some students and companies end up with their last choices, but on the whole companies and students end up on projects that they are happy with. This process is somewhat stressful, but is a good way to meet and network with a wide range of company representatives.