The Global Supply Chain Management Initiative (GSCMI) is the focal point within the Krannert School for pursuing education, research and industrial innovation with those interested in operations and supply chain management.
From conferences and collaboration between students, faculty and firms around the state and across the globe, these opportunities help our industry partners step toward the leading edge of emerging ideas and technologies and provide differentiating advantages to take giant leaps in business.
Annual conferences bring alumni and industry experts to Purdue to share their knowledge on topics related to the supply chain, including managing suppliers, currency risk, capacity disruptions, changes in tariffs and global shocks of all kinds — from weather and political events to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
“If you’re a logistics or supply-chain company, knowing the location of a product at any given time, who is delivering it, how it is being delivered, and when it will arrive are all critical to success,” says Ananth Iyer, the Susan Bulkeley Butler Chair in Operations Management and director of GSCMI. “We now have tools available that provide these companies with real-time information, scalable technology and visual data analytics to improve both their capabilities and return-on-investment.”
The 2020 GSCMI conference featured industry speakers, student case presenters and an opportunity to network and learn about effective strategies to manage global supply chain risk. Ideas included strategic sourcing, the role of backup capacity, using of state-of-the-art planning systems, leveraging real time data, and more. In this video, Krannert alumna Mary Slater of Shell discusses her company’s proactive approach to risk management.
Industry partnerships showcase the latest resources available through Purdue to inspire businesses to create “smart supply chains,” Iyer says. Among the latest examples is a partnership with Peru’s top warehousing, transportation and logistics companies that began in 2018 with a visit to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus and supply chain locations across Indiana.
That relationship has continued to grow as both industry experts and students work together through an experiential learning opportunity hosted by the Center and Tlogistica of Lima, Peru, with support from Krannert alumnus Eduardo Huerta-Mercado (MBA ’00), director of Softeon LATAM and INvent Technologies.
Designed to further enhance student classroom learning, the Business in Peru program will kick off in 2021 with projects that tackle real-life business challenges, including shelf monitoring in grocery stores, productivity monitoring in warehouse operations, data analytics, and sales and marketing process automation.
Community leaders and local economic developers are collaborating with GSCMI to advance the Wabash Heartland Innovation Network (WHIN), a consortium of 10 counties in north-central Indiana that already is leading the state in agriculture and manufacturing. It was funded in 2017 by a $39 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
In the supply chain category, GSCMI is developing a tool to reduce supply chain leakage and map all manufacturers and their capabilities so that new supply chains can be prototyped to develop emerging products and services.
“This supply chain tool will provide valuable data for new economic opportunities and will leverage research tools that have been developed by Krannert faculty in past projects,” Iyer say. “It represents the ideal opportunity for Purdue to enable local economic activity.”
