Olin helps prepare the next generation of metals industry leaders

The first participants enrolled in the Strategic Metals Management Program — an Olin custom executive program designed to train the next generation of metals industry leaders — graduated June 20 in ceremonies at the Knight Center for Executive Education.

The program, offered by the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) in partnership with the Olin Business School, has two additional groups enrolled and is building a third.

Twenty-eight graduates attended five weeks of classes over an 18-month period, covering five content modules: strategy, organizations and shareholder value; achieving market focus; driving operational excellence; creating value and sustaining profitable growth; and leading high-performance organizations.

Olin’s top-rated senior faculty teach the modules. All classes, case studies and lectures are tailored to equip mill and service center executives with the tools and knowledge to boost their performance and prepare them to assume senior executive roles.

Participating executives also have the opportunity to hear from visiting industry executives and, upon completing the program, are awarded a certificate of completion.

“This program has pushed both metals industry leaders and the Olin Business School to new levels of innovation and creativity in executive education and development,” said Ken Bardach, associate dean and the Charles and Joanne Knight Distinguished Director of Executive Programs at Olin.

“We will continue to improve and innovate the program as we go forward. And we hope to forge an even stronger relationship with the MSCI, the graduating executives and their companies in the future,” Bardach said.

“This is an important milestone for our industry and for the Metals Service Center Institute,” said Norman E. Gottschalk Jr., MSCI’s chairman and also president and CEO of Marmon/Keystone Corp. “These individuals have completed a rigorous course of study and are now better prepared for senior management roles than those who have gone before them. I am immensely proud of their accomplishments.”

One measure of the program’s success is that the third class was oversubscribed, and there is a waiting list for the fourth class, expected to begin studies in 2009, Bardach said.

MSCI members constitute the largest single group of metals producers and processors in North America and service some 300,000 manufacturers and fabricators.

Olin has offered custom programs since 1993 and is one of only three business schools in the world rated as “excellent” by The Economist for both customized and open-enrollment executive education programs.