Conferences focus on manufacturing, supply-chain challenges

INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS joined Krannert faculty and students this academic year in a pair of daylong discussions about the challenges facing manufacturing firms and global supply-chain managers.

Krannert’s Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises (DCMME) and the Global Supply Chain Management Initiative (GSCMI) jointly sponsored the fall and spring conferences, which are the centers’ two major annual events.

Held in October, the 2008 conference addressed changes aff ecting the manufacturing industry, including coping with a tightened credit market, the loss of jobs, and the availability of skilled workers.

The conference also featured a competition that was open to MBA and undergraduate management students, who prepared posters describing their summer internship experiences and presented them to attending executives.

“The topics were of particular interest to companies that are dealing with the challenges associated with the economy,” says Ananth Iyer, the centers’ director and the Susan Bulkeley Butler Chair in Operations Management. “The poster sessions also allowed our students valuable face time with corporations at a time when the job market is highly competitive.”

The February 2009 conference provided industry leaders, researchers, field practitioners, and students an opportunity to discuss ways to navigate supply chain operations through the difficult economies in the United States and around the world.

Keynote speaker and Krannert alumna Margaret Bishop (MSM ’85), a global business consultant, offered her perspective on managing challenges in emerging markets and developing countries. In the conference’s fourth annual MBA case competition, student teams from across the nation presented their best solution for a fictitious problem based
on a real-world scenario.

“Over the next year, operations are expected to undergo a profound change,” says Iyer. “Managing the supply chain in a turbulent global economy will be essential to a firm’s success or failure.”

Ananth Lyer