U.S. universities are teaming up with corporations to encourage employees to pursue advanced degrees in Supply Chain Management, in order to advance individual careers and also to increase employee retention. They can even get what amounts to a free year of expert consulting, says Roby Thomas, Ph.D., professor of business at Elmhurst University in Elmhurst, Illinois. Professor Roby is also program director for the Master of Science (M.S.) program in supply chain management, a two-year course aimed at business professionals who have been in the workplace for at least three years. He is also director of the university’s Supply Chain Think Tank.

As part of the course, students are sent on “capstone” projects in the second year, during which they are farmed out to one of the companies that work with Elmhurst — which could be their employer or another company — to find a supply chain project they can tackle for a year. At the end of that year, the students provide findings and specific recommendations. “It’s been a big success in terms of opening eyes about what a program like this can do,” says Roby. 

In essence, the program seeks to encourage employees to continue their education and advance the breadth of their expertise in the field. The need to do so is urgent, says Tim Engstrom, senior vice president of supply chain at 3PL Essendant, and also an alumnus and adjunct professor at Elmhurst.

“As we think about growth and where we want to go as an organization, I want people who have a bigger understanding of the entire supply chain,” Engstrom says. It’s not even about learning new automation technologies or software; just getting a thoroughly broad view of supply chain operations, from suppliers through to customers, is enough to give a supply chain professional a huge career boost because it makes him or her so much more useful to the company. 

“We try to give students a good understanding of the whole process, end to end. And that is something that’s typically missing. Even after COVID, we still have that silo mentality, because it’s easier to stay in a silo,” says Roby. “We give people a rounded education, so they understand that, if they make a decision in one place, it has ramifications elsewhere.”

Essendant currently has 10 employees in the Elmhurst program, some of them with the company or in supply chain management for 20 years, but only in a single discipline. “What I see is an expanded knowledge and understanding of the overall supply chain,” says Engstrom. “The program gives you a view of the analytics, forecasting, demand planning from an inventory perspective, warehousing and supplier relationships, benchmarking... It just expands the perspective. Then you tie in the strategies of the overall flow of goods and information — how each of the disciplines interact and support each other,” says Engstrom. “That’s where I see the benefit of the program.”

One of the biggest areas of value, Roby says, is in long-term planning. “A lot of companies go from quarter to quarter. Process-type optimization projects tend to take longer, and get pushed back in terms of priorities.” Elmhurst students are invited to look at, for example, where facilities are located, and whether there’s a need to rejig them. “These are things that people don’t revisit very often,” Roby says. “There’s often nobody in that role, and the focus is more on short-term planning.” Companies benefit from someone coming in and assessing what happens in five, or even ten years’ time. “They realize they need talent and a long-term view.” 

But there’s short-term benefits, too. Roby says Elmhurst students have completed various year-long projects with Chicago area companies, and can point to up to $5 million in savings at completion. At  Essendant, Engstrom’s company, the students helmed a couple of projects that drastically reduced inventory. In another company, the students solved a safety issue. That’s why companies keep sending their employees to Elmhurst, Roby says. “They realized that a graduate program is effective and provides a lot.”

A benefit harder to quantify, but also important, is empowering supply chain practitioners to communicate what they do and what they need better to internal and external stakeholders. Engstrom says that the more senior the role, the more pressure there is to produce presentations, write white papers and generally talk about what’s happening operationally and strategically. “That’s another asset of the program; that it helps you disseminate and summarize information, and speak about a topic in a format that people can understand what the heck you’re talking about,” says Engstrom. The pandemic highlighted how important supply chains are, and that, in turn, has put more focus on these “soft” skills. “We’re no longer in the shadows,” Engstrom says.

And then there’s the advantage over paid consultants, Roby points out. “First of all, it’s free. Apart from that, there’s no difference,” he laughs. He gives an example of a company Elmhurst was working with that had identified a strategic project for which they had hired a leading consulting firm. “The students lost the project because they brought the consultants in. I asked them to let the students do it also, and give them the same materials,” says Roby. “At the end of the year, they basically implemented what the students gave them, and they had to pay the consultants also!”