Welcome back to class, St. Thomas! With two days of class under my belt and syllabus in hand I have a few minutes to reflect on what happened over J-Term and let you know what I have been up to. J-term is great because you can study abroad, take a class, do a service project, sleep, and many other things it allows you to really be productive. St. Thomas is a great place because you have small class sizes and get to really know your professor. Our location here in the cities also creates great opportunities to interact with business professionals right in your backyard.

A perfect example of this was the Kaizen event that some St. Thomas studnets including myself took part in with Smyth Companies here in the cities. Dr. Olson who is the department chair for Business Operations and Supply Chain Managment took six UST students to Smyth to be members of this Kaizen event. If you do not know what a Kaizen event is, it is a Japanese word that deals with continuous improvement. It is an event used with Lean production and six sigma practices that are common in today’s business world. We went to the company to learn their process of doing business and critically analyze it to improve it. Our job was to make the process more efficient and add value to the company. It was a great experience for the company, for us as students to get real world application of our class room knowledge, and great for St. Thomas to develop and establish a relationship with Smyth.

You may be asking yourself, Smyth? What is that I have never heard of them. Smyth is a custom printing company. I actually had never heard of them until this December, but I am sure you are familiar with some of their work, most notably they were the first company to develop ink that would change colors with temperature and put it on a bottle. The first company to put the mountains on Coors Light bottles to make them turn blue. Below are a few images that they had printed.

 If you didn’t already know that over January St. Thomas officially earned AACSBaccreditation. This is huge for Students, Alumni, and perspective Business students. It is a huge honor for the Opus college of Business as well as the University as a whole. With events like this it proves what St. Thomas has always said, small class sizes, close relationships with companies and industries in the twin cities area produces great ethical business leaders. I know that I had a great experience this J-Term working on this Kaizen event. Now let the second semester begin!

The Smyth UST Kaizen team!