Supply Chain Research Center Sponsors Graduate Logistics Case Competition

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The seventh annual Sam M. Walton College of Business International Graduate Logistics Case Competition attracted its largest field of competitors, representing 10 top graduate schools from the United States and Europe. The event is sponsored by the Supply Chain Management Research Center at the University of Arkansas. The competition was held Oct. 27-29 at the home office of Sam’s Club in Bentonville and the Embassy Suites hotel in Rogers.

“This year’s competition was particularly competitive, requiring an extended judge’s deliberation period,” Jim Crowell, center director, said. “The morning panel of judges needed significantly ‘more encouragement’ than normal to deliver their final results!” 

This year’s case, The Alpyne Case, was written by a team of supply chain academics and practitioners led by Loray Mosher, assistant director and research associate at the Supply Chain Management Research Center. The fictional case involved a major food supplier, Alpyne Foods, challenged to keep its products on the shelves of its largest retailer’s stores. MegaShoppe, faced with increasing customer complaints about empty shelves, informed Alpyne Foods that if the company did not immediately address its in-store product availability issues, the amount of shelf space dedicated to Alpyne’s products would be reduced. In addition, MegaShoppe would reduce the actual number of Alpyne products in their stores. Faced with this challenge, Alpyne hired a team of top retail logistics professionals to help.

The team representing Pennsylvania State University took top honors in the competition, with the team from the University of Maryland placing second, followed by the team from Brigham Young University. The Penn State team, made up of students Jason Jones, Mehul Pathak, Jennifer Ruelelns, Rashmi Sharma, Allison Shauger and Erland Wegger along with faculty representative Alan Stenger, professor emeritus in supply chain management, received $3,000. The Maryland team received $2,000 and the BYU team $1,000.

Teams are grouped for the morning session, with the top-scoring team in each of three tracks emerging to compete for top honors and the cash awards.

The University of Arkansas MBA team made a strong case in the competition, locked in the same morning track as the winning team from Penn State. Members of the university team were Bethany Haefner, Luke Mitchell, Rebecca Carlson, Brandon Gaia, Ross Thomas and Jack Lim. The faculty representative was John Ozment, professor of supply chain management and holder of the Oren Harris Chair of Transportation.

Other graduate case teams in the challenge were from the University of Minnesota, Iowa State University, Texas Christian University, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. The 10th and newest participant was Rutgers University of New Jersey.  

 This year’s case was the first to mandate that team representatives make tours of a retailer distribution center, a retailer’s store operations and a supplier’s operations. Sam’s Club and Unilever, the event host sponsors, and Walmart Stores Inc., an event gold sponsor, made the tours possible. Other sponsors for this year’s competition were ABF Freight System Inc., FedEx Freight, Nestlé, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, Braiform, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., Transplace, CHAINalytics, EJ Gallo Winery, Tyson Foods Inc., and the Ozark Roundtable of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

The center thanked the many industry and University of Arkansas volunteers who helped make the event possible. 

Photos from the event are available at http://scmr.uark.edu/