Supply Chain and Operations Management

Four Reasons To Study Supply Chain In California

ilseu — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 23:33:05 +0000

Four Reasons To Study Supply Chain In California ilseu Mon, 04/15/2024 - 16:33 More Blog Posts Almha Murphy, BusinessBecause April 10, 2024

This story was originally published on BusinessBecause.

There’s more to California than leafy palm trees, golden-sand beaches, and the Kardashians. It’s also a major supply chain hub. California is home to two of the US’s largest ports in LA and Long Beach and a key operations base for delivery companies such as UPS and Amazon.

Aniedi Effiong ’21 MBA

It was a location that appealed to Nigerian-born Aniedi Effiong (pictured right), who had spent five years working in various telecommunication roles across Africa before feeling the need for a career change.

In order to switch paths, Aniedi began to search for the right business program that could provide him with the necessary tools to upskill.

So, when his brother suggested the STEM-designated MBA program at the University of California, Riverside—which offers a specialization in Operations and Supply Chain Management—he leapt at the opportunity.

“[Riverside] is one hour away from Los Angeles, which coming from Nigeria, it's like the City of Angels,” he jokes. “So, it was just a dream location.”

Now an operations manager for the multi-billion-dollar tech conglomerate Amazon, his supply chain-focused MBA at Riverside has indeed proved to be a career blessing.

But what are the four ways that studying in California helped him get there?

1. Experience a campus catered for international students

Moving halfway around the world is no easy feat. Finding accommodation, organizing travel, and preparing to leave your home are all stressful endeavors. But when Aniedi stepped off his 11-hour flight from Nigeria to LAX, he was met with a more-than pleasant surprise.

“An associate director of admissions actually came to the airport to pick me up,” he says.

Having driven over an hour and a half to collect him and taxi him to his new room on-campus, the UCR faculty and staff immediately made clear their dedication to making each student feel at home.

It’s an ethos that is maintained within the MBA program, where about half of the cohort are international. While at UCR, students can receive counseling from student advisors on everything from adjusting to US culture to improving their English.

“[UCR] was a family for me,” Aniedi says.

Plus, the university also provides over 450 clubs for students to get involved with, from hiking, to art, to organizations for underrepresented groups. These provide a great way to build friendships.

2. Learn from state-of-the-art experiential teaching

During the program, one aspect that really impressed Aniedi was the high quality of the UCR teaching staff, which consists of renowned business professors from fields such as finance and management.

Since students don’t specialize until their second year, attending a diverse range of classes helps broaden their career outlook.

“Just hearing my professors talk exposed me to different areas of business,” Aniedi says.

High quality teaching is compounded upon by practical core courses, such as a professional development workshop requiring students to learn key skills that include networking, interviewing, and salary negotiation.

They are then able to put this into practice by participating in a summer internship of their choosing, helping to prepare them for a chosen career path.

Aniedi was offered the opportunity to work with one of his professors in program management for the World Food Organization. Unfortunately, the opportunity fell through due to Covid travel restrictions, however, with travel now open again, students can intern with top companies such as IBM and Deloitte.

3. Explore different areas of supply chain

While to some, supply chain may seem like a niche area, the field encompasses a wide range of skillsets.

Once studying the supply chain specialization, students have the opportunity to pick from a wide selection of courses, which include Business Analytics for Management and Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

One optional course that Aniedi found particularly useful was Spreadsheet Modelling for Decision Making.

“Even today, I think of a problem and the first thing that comes to my head is how can I model this in Excel,” he says.

Equally, there are also plenty of opportunities to incorporate more innovative sustainability practices, such as ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) principles, into supply chain.

According to the supply chain technology company Sedex, ESG practices are becoming increasingly popular in the industry in 2024—however, there is room for further innovation with regards to using data and analytics to improve companies’ environmental impact.

“It’s a field where there's a demand for talent,” Aniedi adds.

4. Access top job opportunities

Undoubtedly, one of the top benefits of studying supply chain in California is the wealth of industries that use it as a major distribution hub.

UCR endeavors to expose students to these nearby companies by hosting key industry speakers and organizing networking events, as well as offering students one-on-one career coaching through the Student Success Center.

Aniedi attributes the interview practice he was able to undergo while in the program to landing his Amazon Pathways role straight after graduation.

“The skills I gained my first year were sufficient that I was able to get a job just as I was finishing my internship,” he says.

After moving to Dallas, Texas, for his role, he was quickly promoted to a senior manager position, where he now uses several key skills that he learned during his MBA in his day-to-day—including supply management, capacity planning, and people management.

“It's multifaceted,” he says. “You use people skills, organizational behavior, your understanding of yourself, and emotional intelligence.”

Other popular companies that supply chain specialization graduates go on to work with include Walt Disney, KPMG, and eBay.

Reflecting on his decision to apply to UCR, Aniedi feels that for anyone considering a role in supply chain, California is a great place to launch their career.

“UCR, especially, is the in the heart of the Inland Empire, so you're in a prime location for keeping your options open.”

Mass Customization Makes Fashion More Sustainable

ilseu — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 23:16:27 +0000

Mass Customization Makes Fashion More Sustainable ilseu Tue, 02/01/2022 - 15:16 More News Holly Ober | UCR News February 08, 2022

The fashion industry produces far more inventory than it sells, consuming and polluting more of the planet’s resources than necessary and generating about 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this excess merchandise ends up in landfills or is burned, prolonging the environmental assault.

Mass customization, where customers order clothing made to their own style tastes and measurements, has been proposed as one solution to overproduction. But the logistical challenges of tailoring garments to individual customer requests and lengthy manufacturing lead times have discouraged most firms from adopting mass customization. They might want to reconsider that decision, according to a new study co-authored by a UC Riverside researcher. Forthcoming in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, the study suggests that under the right circumstances, mass customization can generate higher profits and reduce environmental waste considerably.

Adem Orsdemir, professor of operations and supply chain management

Customers willing to wait for bespoke clothing from a company that both mass produces and mass customizes garments can make the fashion industry more environmentally sustainable, but only when overproduction is really a problem, reports the study, coauthored by Adem Orsdemir, a professor of operations and supply chain management in UCR’s School of Business. Government policies that make recycling or disposal more expensive for companies boost the sustainable effect in certain situations.

Orsdemir and co-author Aydin Alptekinoglu at Pennsylvania State University developed an analytical model of a mass production firm that went hybrid by also adopting mass customization. The researchers modeled product variety, price, and inventory decisions the firm makes to maximize its profits.

They found that when customers could be persuaded to wait longer for customized garments, the benefit of mass customization increased unambiguously. The benefit also unambiguously increased when policymakers targeted high disposal fees or costly recycling programs at firms with a low cost of product variety, such as fast-fashion brands like H&M, to deter overproduction and targeted firms with a high cost of product variety, such as most luxury brands, to acquire technology that would make recycling profitable.

In some cases, the conflicting demands of mass production and mass customization caused the firm to overproduce. For example, a hypothetical denim company mass produces a quantity of jeans that usually sell out each season. Some people switch to custom, increasing overall production and making the environmental impact worse. For hybrid mass customization and mass production to be profitable for the firm as well as environmentally beneficial, companies need to strike a balance between the two production modes.

“If you can promote it as a sustainable way of producing fashion goods and increase the customer’s patience with waiting, mass customization is more likely to become a win-win,” said Orsdemir.

Before adopting mass customization however, companies need to consider that the practice can ultimately make overproduction worse and sustainability an even more elusive goal than it already is.

“Mass customization can be helpful or hurtful,” said Orsdemir. “The bottom line is it’s helpful when there’s a lot of overproduction. Mass customization can improve that. But when overproduction isn’t really a problem, mass customization can make overproduction worse.”

Though their work focused on the fashion industry, the authors think their findings could also apply to other industries where overproduction creates environmental problems.

The paper, “Is adopting mass customization a path to environmentally sustainable fashion?” has been accepted for publication in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, a top journal hosted by INFORMS and is available on the SSRN preprint server.

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Header photo: Unsplash

The Pandemic’s Lessons for the Supply Chain

ilseu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 06:10:36 +0000

The Pandemic’s Lessons for the Supply Chain ilseu Tue, 03/30/2021 - 23:10 More News Laurie McLaughlin March 26, 2021

Due to COVID-19 precautions, Professional MBA student Benjamin Gonzalez ’21 participated remotely in the Project Management course taught by Supply Chain and Operations Management Lecturer Suri Gurumurthi. As the lectures unfolded, Gonzalez realized the course’s immediate applicability. “I have used what I learned in my current position,” he says. “The pandemic has forced companies to re-evaluate how they source their materials and how we prepare for catastrophic events, whether they are regional or international.”

Suri Gurumurthi

Gurumurthi incorporates the pandemic’s influence on global commerce in his courses, and despite the tragedy of the virus, Gonzalez appreciated the chance to learn and observe the implications in real time. This class was one of four courses he took that were taught by Gurumurthi, and Gonzalez, who is currently planning manager at The Gill Corporation, is quick to underscore how much he appreciates the lecturer’s instruction. “He has a lot of career experience with all things related to supply chain management and provides relatable case studies and expert analysis,” says Gonzalez, who graduates this year with a master’s degree concentration in operations and supply chain management. “I am also impressed by how much he enjoys teaching his craft to us.”

Gurumurthi specializes in operations and supply chain management as well as project and strategic management—areas of business that are presently in the spotlight as a result of pandemic-related issues affecting the general public, such as the shortage of products on grocery-store shelves last year and the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations this year. “The pandemic has taken business leaders to an important crossroads, and supply chain globalization trends of the past 40 years or so will be re-examined with a view to building greater resilience and to meeting business and environmental sustainability goals,” says Gurumurthi.

“In my view, operations and supply chain management education can help train a new generation of leaders who are unafraid to tackle complexity and harness the latest technologies to solve problems. This will support a global agenda driven by climate concerns coupled with an agenda incorporating safety and security in interdependent economies.”

One of the areas Gurumurthi has studied in recent years is supply chains rooted in China and the ways they have adapted to global corporate initiatives and sustainability concerns. “For example, I spent several months studying how one of the world’s largest shirt-makers in Hong Kong has tried to take the lead in transforming their supply chain for greater sustainability and corporate social responsibility,” he says.

Gurumurthi began his career in the automotive industry, followed by work in the semiconductor and aerospace sectors. He says the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, spawned his interest in the impacts of gradual market trends as well as major crises on global supply chains and the criticality of effective management: “My work experiences have helped shape my pedagogy,” he says, and he tries to bring all his cross-domain experiences, reflections, and analyses of current events into the classroom.

“Connecting frameworks from different fields and topics creates a bridge for highly effective leaders who are not just generalists, but also effective managers of complexity, making critical decisions based on cross-functional analytics.”

Gonzalez is doing just that. “I am able to look at supply chain issues differently in light of COVID-19. The supply chain world has relied heavily on minimizing costs, which often means relying on single sources of supply, and with that comes risk,” says Gonzalez. “The course’s lessons were especially powerful as the pandemic has changed the way we work.”

Thinking of himself as “facilitator of student learning,” says Gurumurthi, he “connects the dots for motivated students,” and he pours all that he knows into his lessons. “I like the ‘cross-pollination’ of concepts and applications from across the spectrum of business topics that I teach.

“The world is full of problems that can be alternately daunting and exciting. Chipping away at these problems—what we call ‘continuous improvement’—can lead to long-term success.”

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Header image by Tumisu on Pixabay