Dr. Barry Lawrence named holder of Hubbell Professorship
Dr. Barry Lawrence, associate professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, has been named holder of the Harvey Hubbell Professorship in Industrial Distribution in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. The Hubbell Professorship is a development professorship, a new type of professorship for associate professors, implemented by the Look College to recognize and reward outstanding performance in teaching, research and service of faculty with a high potential for continued professional growth.

PAID Career Fair
The 9th Annual PAID Career Fair was held Friday, February 6th, 2004 in Reed Arena at Texas A&M University. Sixty two companies were involved in recruiting TAMU Industrial Distribution students for both full-time and internship employment opportunities. On Thursday 5ht, 2004 prior to Career Fair on Friday, members of the participating companies and Industrial students played golf and later attended a social in the evening.

International Visitors to ID Program at TAMU
ID program hosted visitors from Universidad Panamericana during the week of February 1st. During their stay the group visited Metro Stairs-Houston, Inc, Ultra Clean Technology and Applied Materials at Austin along with attending extensive session at the Supply Chain Systems Laboratory of ID Program.

ID Video Lab
A brand new facility is under completion in Thompson Hall and will be fully operational by Friday, February 27. This Video Laboratory has three interview rooms along with a central control room. The interview rooms have video recording facilities with multimedia support for video and graphics editing. This facility will be used by students taking IDIS430-Sales Engineering in the development of their sales and communication skills. The lab will also be used to record video lectures for instructional and training purpose.


IDEA Educational Conference
1st annual meeting of Industrial Distributors Educators Association (IDEA) will be held from March 4-5 at the Caribe Royale Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, Florida; in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Federation of Business Disciplines. As part of the conference, Program coordinators from variety of Industrial Distribution Programs will discuss "Emerging Trends in Industrial Distribution Education".

Research Funding for Yr 2004
As per TEES statistics, Industrial Distribution Program's research funding reached over $250,000 for fiscal year 2003. Industrial Distribution faculty is actively involved in the applied research in partnership with Industrial distribution industry on wide range of topics.


Upcoming CDM Module: Inventory & Operations Management Seminar!
Learn the latest "cutting-edge" techniques for improving inventory and operations management. The Read Center is presenting a seminar, which is part of the three-module Certificate in Distribution Management (CDM).

Inventory is one of the distributor's largest assets and the inability to properly control it can result in lost business, profits, or both. Learn the distributors' role in supply chain management, and how distributors and their suppliers can use information-based inventory management to create competitive advantage.

- Understand that one of the primary drivers of inventory is forecast error
- Learn how to better forecast and manage inventory
- Learn inventory re-order point logic and how to use it to reduce total inventory investment while improving customer service
- Manage inventory for improved turns and cash flow
- How to achieve an optimal logistics operation.
- Establish meaningful operations and customer service performance metrics
- Improve operations cycle times and increase asset utilization
- Learn the benefits of re-order point logic to determine when and how much to buy
- Understand how to determine accurate holding and stock-out costs

To learn more about the other two modules of the CDM, Leading the Sales Team, and Improving distributor Profitability, go to http://readcenter.tamu.edu and click on seminars.