Canadian Operational Research Society

Calgary Section

http://www.corscalgary.org/

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR

When: Noon to 1:30 PM, Thursday, May 17, 2007

Room 217

TransCanada Tower

450 - 1 Street SW

(See attached map)

SPEAKER

Ron Kitt

Process Analyst

Surplus Property Management

Imperial Oil Limited

TOPIC

Personal Productivity, Communication & E-mail

Abstract:

In this presentation we will look at personal productivity, communication and e-mail in the workplace.

The debate over IT's impact on productivity is nearly as old as technology itself. In 1959, Peter Drucker looked at the emerging work world and coined the term "knowledge worker." Knowledge work has certainly flourished, but, as Drucker noted more recently, we still haven't mastered the issue of knowledge-work productivity. The majority of workers constantly use data, information, and knowledge—to varying degrees—in their jobs. Although recent productivity surges are attributed to the use of IT, we still have no effective way to measure or verify its impact on information work.

The presenter’s project began with desktop productivity. The desktop is an enabler to business results. In an industry survey managers ranked collaborative software tools such as intranets or E-mail as their top choices. However, we are seeing more articles such as in INFORMATION WEEK- August 2006: "Businesses Struggle Under Growing Weight of E-Mail." This lead to focusing the presenter’s project on e-mail primarily but also looking at communication. Are we communicating as well as we can? From a “lean” view we ask: are there wastes in e-mail? Over-production? Over-processing? Over-sizing? Any defective e-mails? What is the cost of poor quality?

Can we do anything about improving communication? What can organizations do to improve communication and thus personal productivity of the knowledge worker? What are some organizations doing?

About the Speaker:

Ron Kitt is a Process Analyst in the Surplus Property Management Department at Imperial Oil Limited. Ron has been with Imperial Oil for 29 years. Over the years he has worked on a variety of optimization, statistical and six sigma projects and spent ten+ years implementing and supporting SAP. He is currently working on integrating upstream and downstream processes in a recently formed department. Prior to that Ron worked as Continuous Improvement Specialist in the Information Services department where one of his projects was on personal productivity, communication and e-mail. Ron has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta and a Master of Science in Business Administration specializing in Management Science.