Building collaborative engagement
The Office of Business Partnerships at Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business creates and provides solutions to the business challenges of today and the future.
Dedicated Daniels School professionals streamline opportunities for industry partners and alumni to connect with students and faculty beyond the traditional classroom setting. The partnerships office helps companies solve business challenges through consulting-focused experiential learning projects across all business functions via course-based engagements or contracts with our centers.
Applying the power of data to serve industry needs is in the Office of Business Partnerships’ DNA. Moving beyond theory into real problem-solving is a call to action our office takes seriously. We understand organizations large and small face uncertainty, rapid technological changes and the continuous need to train employees and cultivate new talent.
Let’s get started, together.
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There are so many ways we can work together to create and nurture a rewarding partnership that benefits your organization. Explore the opportunities that make up the core of a strategic partnership with Purdue and the Daniels School.
Enhance your organization's leadership capacity by investing in their development through a residential, online or hybrid degree program, certificate courses or a custom offering.
Collaborate with our centers of excellence and expert faculty researchers to gain access to top thought leadership.
Develop future team members while filling your most challenging positions. Your next hire could be that talented intern, a stellar full-time candidate or a transformational executive you meet through a tailored recruitment strategy designed for your company.
Join forces with our expert faculty and top students to create a consulting project that will define and test solutions for your pain points.
Drive industry and academic innovation through board membership, mentoring, guest lectures and curricular guidance.
The industry partner is a large welding equipment manufacturer with a low volume, high mix of machines. The current supply chain for welding machines has ≈ 13,000 unique parts across ≈ 800 different suppliers.
Today, the industry partner employs pull-system planning policy through our vertically integrated facility as a lean manufacturing strategy to reduce on-hand inventory. The company does not utilize traditional materials requirements planning (MRP) as generally seen in a push system.
The industry partner will share two different forecasting scenarios with our suppliers, which are referred to as the “Standard” and “Max” forecasts. The value provided is the forecasted monthly consumption.
Scenario #1 (Standard forecast) – A straight-line explosion of the sales forecast
Scenario #2 (Max forecast) – An algorithm based on the historical demand variability to capture a surge or peak monthly demand level over the trailing 12 months.
This project addressed supply chain instability affecting a company in the energy and materials sector. Students were challenged to develop a strategic approach to improve the resilience of the company’s global supply chain network. The focus was on building transparency, diversifying sourcing, modernizing outdated systems and embedding proactive risk management practices to mitigate future disruptions and support sustainable growth. Two specific disruptions — a national rail strike and a fire at a supplier's facility — were used as case scenarios to analyze operational vulnerabilities and flow impacts.
The company partner, which produces, distributes and sells non-alcoholic (soft drinks, juices) and alcoholic beverages (malt beverages, rum, beer), partnered with the Master of Science Human Resource Management program. The student team designed a DE& I strategic plan to integrate the acquired brewery into Fortune 500 ownership. The team conducted meetings with DE&I leadership craft sites and the surrounding community to gain insight into initiatives, strategies, and definitions for both the conglomerate-owner and craft beer partners. In addition to internal research, the student team investigated and researched external strategies for DE&I from peers and competitors, including benchmarking and SWOT analysis.
Academic and industry partnerships bring together the best of industry-specific and cutting-edge business knowledge to craft new and innovative ideas.
Mike Pettit
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Wabash
