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She's Got Their Number(1/3)

Brenda Dietrich revels in theory but lives in the real world-and her team of mathematicians is changing the way IBM works

The word is out at IBM: Whatever you're doing, the company's math team can help. Here's an example: After IBM's sales team signs a consulting contract, the company often has to assemble the project team on deadline-say, 50 Java developers in Chicago by the following Monday. It can choose from 190.000 consultants around the world with various skills, personalities and availability. It must do this for thousands of projects a year, for clients of all sizes in every imaginable?industry. Meanwhile, the mix of projects and available consultants is constantly changing.

"When we first started asking what resources consultants use on projects, they said every project was different," says Brenda Dietrich, 47, head of the math sciences department at IBM. "That just drove me crazy." By poring over two years of project data, her team identified which skills were most often applied in certain types of assignments. That staffing-analysis tool helped managers anticipate demand and schedule accordingly, boosting the consultants' productivity seven percent and reducing travel expenses and the use of outside contractors. The savings exceeded $500 million.

Applying theory to practice

Brenda Dietrich joined IBM in 1984 after earning her Ph.D. in operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell University. She applied mathematics to designing more-efficient chip-manufacturing lines. It was thrilling?to see how useful math could be. In the mid-1990s-between projects-she pursued a new set of problems by spending six months in the field alongside IBM consultants and customers. "They couldn't tell you the dependent and independent variables" of their operations, Dietrich says. But she could, and that ability to translate the practical into the theoretical (and back) was powerful. In some ways, this experience was the basis for how she now operates the math sciences department at IBM's renowned?Thomas J.Watson Research Center.

Vocabulary Focus

revel in (phr. v) ---to get great pleasure from

consultant (n)---someone who advises people on a particular subject

pore over (phr .v) ---to look at and study very carefully

Specialized Terms

Java (n) ---爪哇程序語言a computer programming language frequently used on the Internet

contractor (n) ---承包商a person or company that supplies goods or does work for other people

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