Partnerships between industry professionals and Purdue University’s business school benefit both the school’s faculty, students and curriculum and the company’s talent pipeline and business operations.
Through its ongoing partnership with the Daniels School of Business, professionals at global food and beverage company PepsiCo have the opportunity to identify and develop top talent early in the students’ academic careers. Nick Sprecher is a supply chain manager at PepsiCo who has for the past four years headed up a partnership between the school and PepisCo’s Indianapolis location. As a 2019 graduate of the business school, Sprecher is well acquainted with the caliber of students studying at the Daniels School.
“We are looking for the talent Purdue produces,” Sprecher says. “We don’t want PepsiCo to just be the company that shows up for the career fair – we are invested in the talent.”
The partnership just wrapped up its seventh year, one in which undergraduate supply chain students in Clinical Professor Amy David’s Introduction to Supply Chain Management class tackle a case — a problem to solve — prepared by PepsiCo. The case might present a seemingly straightforward question — how many pallets of each flavor to produce and when? — that is in reality extremely complicated.
PepsiCo and David work together to set due dates, and draft the case so it coordinates with her curriculum.
“We need to know what they’re working on, learning, so we know what we can ask,” Sprecher says. “We’ll send her the case in December and she’ll make edits.”
The most recent spring semester partnership kicked off in January with an in-person meeting. “We explain the case, and students get a packet that we refine each year,” Sprecher says. “We talk about our Purdue experience and how we want to be a resource for them.”
PepsiCo and the students meet virtually each week to discuss assignments. The students can be counted on to do meeting prep, collaborating beforehand to come up with questions.
“At our weekly meetings, they ask great questions about supply chain, capacity issues, how are we managing inflation costs? They think about things beyond the general project,” Sprecher says.
Purdue alumni Grant Bair, Khyaati Balaji and Adam Hufford, and more PepsiCo employees, are involved in making the partnership a success, creating cases, running regular meetings, giving feedback and more. It takes a village: there are typically 11 or 12 groups of five to six students.
These students are getting an inside look at an industry via PepsiCo professionals, Sprecher notes.
“They get to understand key supply chain principles, the KPIs, the lingo that supply chain professionals use that maybe aren’t integrated into courses.”
In the middle of the partnership, Purdue and PepsiCo hold two experiential days. The first is a career panel. Members of PepsiCo’s leadership team answer questions in an open forum, touching upon career paths, different roles in the industry, challenges to expect, and how students can set themselves apart in their future job searches. Sprecher enjoys this event, as it allows the students to briefly step away from the project and case.
Next is a tour of the Indianapolis Gatorade plant and warehouse, a day Sprecher relishes. “I love doing it. I love the bustle of the plant tour,” he says. “It might seem like an old factory from the outside, but it’s not your father’s production plant.” The engineering towers, machinery and robotics are all extremely automated, he notes. Fellow Purdue alums and PepsiCo team members Logan Barr and Kate Adams help lead the tour.
Then comes the final presentations, attended by PepsiCo senior leaders. In addition to improving their presentation skills, students are able to network with directors and senior leaders.
Sprecher says the Daniels School’s Office of Business Partnerships (OBP) has been a great partner and resource that shows their support by marketing the partnership, attending in-person events and promoting the course by collaborating with the school’s advising office and other groups.
“They are always very proactive,” he says of the OBP.
PepsiCo intends to eventually form these sorts of partnerships with other universities, Sprecher notes. But — there’s something special about Purdue, he says.
Nearly every PepsiCo employee involved with the Daniels School partnership and course is a Purdue alum, Sprecher says. And there’s a warm enthusiasm at PepsiCo for the Purdue partnership.
“We get to stay connected to our university, to stay engaged with students, and to build relationships with future PepsiCo team members. We bring on PepsiCo employees every year who have taken the course,” he says.
Case in point is PepsiCo supply chain analytics manager Jessica Wiercioch, who graduated from the Daniels School in 2019. She took David’s class as a sophomore, when her career trajectory was still murky.
“The class was a semester-long simulation of launching a new product through Gatorade’s supply chain, covering everything from demand planning and manufacturing to warehousing, transportation, and finance,” Wiercioch says. “Getting to experience the entire supply chain in a single class was exactly what I needed as I was thinking about career paths.”
Wiercioch connected with the two PepsiCo employees who led the partnership then, and they encouraged her to apply for PepsiCo’s internship program. That internship led to a full-time offer after graduation as a supply planner.
“Since then, I’ve moved into analytics, where I now collaborate with all the supply chain functions I was first introduced to in Dr. David’s class,” Wiercioch says.
