According to a press release on the school’s website, four graduate students from the Quinlan School of Business were presented with $1,000 scholarships following outstanding work on a class project for Chicago-based manufacturer, Hu-Friedy. As part of a Supply Chain Analytics course, the dental equipment manufacturer tasked students with evaluating alternative shipping strategies to move materials from their suppliers to their manufacturing facilities. The manufacturer was so impressed with the students’ work following the project that it awarded scholarships to the winning team of Mike Larocco, Jihong Liu, Jie Wei Lo, and Tom Scanlan.
Scanlan, an MBA student, said his group approached the project from two angles: First, they looked into how much it would cost for Hu-Friedy to purchase a truck to handle their transportation needs, accounting for insurance, maintenance, etc. Second, they determined that it would perhaps be best to recommend that the company outsource their shipping, a conclusion no other team drew up.
“We did something that no other group did,” Scanlan said. “We went out and we got real quotes from 3PL [third party logistics] companies. Basically, with a 3PL, you just outsource it completely. So we put together a cost analysis of how much it would cost Hu-Friedy to buy a truck versus how much it would cost to outsource it to a 3PL. Ultimately, we recommended for them to outsource their shipping.”
Hu-Friedy is a member of Quinlan’s Supply and Value Chain Center. The manufacturer initially approached Quinlan about partnering at last year’s Supply Chain and Sustainability Summit. The annual Summit invites speakers ranging from U.S. government officials to leaders of multinational companies to discuss topics such as sustainability communication, optimal supply chains initiatives, financial advantages of sustainable operations, supply chain education, and international logistics.
“The partnership was a great experience,” said Luke Durand, global procurement manager for Hu-Friedy. “Once the students had the data and information in their hands, we were essentially ‘hands off’ and at the mercy of their experience, knowledge, and education during the class to come up with solutions to our problem statement.”
Scanlan echoed Durand’s sentiment, saying “It was a great experience… It was great to work with a real company. We weren’t just working on a generic case study from a book. This was a real life Chicago-based company case study that we got to interact with. We visited their manufacturing plant and met with their senior leadership. It was cool to present an actual solution to them.”