Supply-chain team goes Full Circle
When a University of Arkansas team of business graduate students won the Bowersox Graduate Supply Chain Challenge this fall, they donated half the award to the university’s Full Circle Food Pantry.
The Sam M. Walton School of Business team won $5,000.
Team members Zack Hall, Amberle Morgan, Jason Schloss and Xiao Yan Zheng decided to donate $2,500 to the studentrun assistance program that distributes food and personal products to members of the campus community.
Matthew Waller, who heads the supply-chain management department, said winning the competition is “equivalent to winning the BCS championship in football.” UA established its department July 1, 2011, while competing universities have had supply-chain management programs for decades, said Waller. Ohio State University finished second and Michigan State took third place.
Teams from nine universities used a simulated real-time competitive supply-chain environment to test their skills in designing and managing supply chains against a common scenario, said Loray Mosher, assistant director and research associate in the Supply Chain Management Research Center in Walton College. Teams had to make many decisions ranging from modes of transportation to production schedules and order fulfillment. Teams were ranked based on total revenue, order fulfillment, inventory turns and a profit known as “supply chain contribution.”Consortium rated world-changing
An organization with Fayetteville roots has been ranked among the top 10 World Changing Ideas for 2012 by Scientific American.
The Sustainability Consortium was commended by the magazine’s editors among “innovations that are radical enough to change our lives.” The ideas are described as “game changers” that are “not pie-in-the-sky notions but practical breakthroughs that have been proved or prototyped and are poised to scale up greatly.”
Jon Johnson, the Sustainability Consortium’s co-founder and academic director and a professor of management in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, said, “We are honored and we humbly agree. That has always been our focus all along - to develop robust, science-based knowledge and tools that companies all over the world can use. It was our hope that our work would effect real change - economically, socially and environmentally. We are seeing that now, and others are starting to notice, which is gratifying.”
The consortium was co-founded and is jointly administered by the University of Arkansas and Arizona State University. It is a global organization of businesses, universities and nonprofits that develops science-based tools to advance the measurement and reporting of consumer product sustainability. It now tops 90 members that employ more than 57 million people and whose combined revenue totals $1.5 trillion.
The Sustainability Consortium was recognized as a superior sustainability measurement and reporting system because of its comprehensive nature and cross-sector approach. The consortium will publish information for more than 100 product categories in 2012. The organization focuses on the areas of food, beverage, agriculture, electronics, toys, home and personal care, paper, pulp and forestry and packaging. An additional group focused on clothing, footwear and textiles will begin working in February 2013.
“The consortium’s ratings will factor in closely held data on emissions, waste, labor practices, water usage and other sensitive factors,” said Adam Piore, who wrote the article for Scientific American’s December issue. “The data should make the index more comprehensive than others.” Briefs are for businesses in Northwest Arkansas that are new, have moved or closed, opened a new branch, changed owners or have been honored by an independent organization. E-mail items to [email protected]. Information will be published as space allows.
Business, Pages 64 on 12/02/2012