Bringing Supply Chain Management To K-12

Editor’s Note: In the July/August issue of SCMR, we take a look at how Walgreens is rethinking its recruitment strategy to attract the talent it needs to execute its new supply chain strategy. In the following column, Cheryl Dalsin, a former executive at Intel who is now with APICS, talks about a program designed to bring supply chain management to students in K-12.

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“How much can elementary school kids really learn about supply chain management at that age?”

That question was posed to me at a round table on the talent crisis at the APICS annual conference last fall. Based on an initiative that I and my former colleagues at Intel launched a few years ago, I think the answer is: Quite a lot. In fact, the program we developed has been presented to K-12 students in five states in the U.S., five cities in Asia, and one city in Ireland. Working with faculty and supply chain students from Michigan State University, Arizona State University– and with input from MIT and now APICS – our goal is to reach 100,000 K-12 students by 2020.

The catalyst for the program came about five years ago, when I volunteered to be the science mom for my daughter's first grade classroom. Working for a company like Intel which is so dependent on engineering and chemistry, I was a long-time science advocate. Yet my daughter and her friends found the pre-defined set of activities I was given by the school to be boring. That was the wrong message for first graders, especially my daughter.

Instead, I created my own version of a fun science activity – and pulled in a colleague to help me deliver it to the classroom. We borrowed some bunny suits – the suits worn in the clean room by our scientists; we brought in CPU's and some silicon wafers; we showed them a video on how Intel turns sand into a computer chip; and they looked at the different colors and shapes of sand grains under a magnifying glass. Last, we did a wafer processing (photolithography) simulation, showing them on a screen how photolithography is done on real silicon wafers at Intel. Then they could mimic the photolithography process with icing and sprinkles on a cookie. The best part: they could eat their designs.

At the end of a two-hour activity, the kids were really fired up about science and all of them wanted to work for Intel. And the germ of an idea started – that this one-time activity needed to be something more. My motivation went beyond just keeping things interesting for my daughter and her friends. At Intel, we were seeing that supply chain management requires a breadth of knowledge across multiple areas, with a combination of technical, problem-solving and data analytics skills. Finding individuals with that combination of skills isn't easy. I thought that if we could show kids the impact that science and supply chain management have on our daily lives, maybe more of them would choose supply chain management as a college major rather than joining the profession later.

About one year later, I submitted a one-page innovation proposal to Intel's Supply Chain – Customer Fulfillment, Planning and Logistics staff. It was approved, and I started to create a volunteer outreach program focused on STEM and the supply chain for K-8 students. We began small with a pilot at my daughter's school. One of the first steps was to find universities interested in partnering with us to serve as a sounding board, help us develop classroom activities and, in the right locations, offer access to students who might volunteer be part of the program. From the outset, Arizona State University (John Fowler), Michigan State University (Judy Whipple) and MIT (Jim Rice) wanted to be involved.

A second step was to enlist a small team of Intel colleagues who shared my passion for this program. Going into elementary and middle schools isn't for everyone, so finding team members who were excited by the concept was essential.

For our K-8 pilot, we developed a group of hands-on activities, based on everyday common themes: lemonade, LEGO cars, paper airplanes, and pizza. Each activity was led by a small group of volunteers and could be completed during two hours of classroom time. We also identified critical success indicators – activities had to be seen as “fun” for the students, and a “value-add” for the teachers.

We started by describing how STEM and the supply chain work together out in the world. To make it fun - and real - we used lemonade as an example. We figured out how many lemons it would take to make a batch of lemonade by figuring out the weight of a lemon and how much juice a lemon produces. That was the science side of the equation. To explain the supply chain, we used the source, make and deliver model, with each kid representing a unique link in the supply chain from the sugar beet to the truck driver delivering the finished product to a store.

At the end of the activity, we met with teachers in the school to assess what worked well and what could be improved. One of the recommendations, for instance, was that we incorporate the five senses into the presentation. The light bulb went off: That was a no-brainer.

We also received input from our university partners. MIT's Jim Rice suggested that we add reuse and recycle to the source, make and deliver model to explain sustainability. Judy Whipple from Michigan State University came up with an idea to create a LEGO activity to illustrate just-in-time manufacturing.

In all, it took about six months to develop, and after completing the pilot we felt we had a program we could roll out to K-8 schools, beginning in communities where Intel had a presence.

The next big step was to take the program up a notch to the high school level. Thanks to a series of fortuitous events, we began that process at Arizona State University where Jim Kellso, one of my former Intel colleagues, is now on the faculty, and Kelsey Hughes, the niece of another colleague, was a student looking for a supply chain thesis topic. Call it Supply Chain Kismet.

With Jim serving as her faculty adviser, Kelsey created a cell phone game that requires students to pick a supply chain design to manufacture/deliver a highly-reliable, low cost cell phone that can be purchased anywhere. Student teams compete with each other in several rounds with the end goal of being the most profitable team. First they choose whether manufacturing will be insourced, outsourced or outsourced to a low cost economy; each option has unique lead times, minimum order quantities and cost. Next each team picks a random demand card ranging from 1-10. Based on that round's demand and existing team inventory, students decide how many new phones to order from their supplier. Orders are placed, financial data is tracked, phone orders are delivered, and penalties are incurred if inventory or demand is miscalculated. Multiple rounds are played. Each round starts with a unique random demand card, and ends with a comparison of teams financials.

Since that first pilot four years ago, we expanded the program around the world in locales where Intel has a presence, and we've involved volunteers in the U.S., Asia, and Ireland as well as students and faculty from Michigan State University and Arizona State University.

In March of 2015, I submitted an innovation idea to Intel's Shark Tank (modeled after the TV show), to support the creation of a non-profit where industry, academia and organizations can come together to support a supply chain initiative. I was selected as 1 of 4 finalists to present their innovation idea to 4 senior VP's last September – and walked away a winner. We already have academic buy in. We have presented the idea to APICS, ISM and CSCMP, which are the top three supply chain organizations – and we've already done some local pilots with ISM in Arizona. APICS, where I am now working, has stepped forward and is onboard. We also want to bring other organizations onboard. Our belief is that this is a program that can be leveraged by many communities.

How will we measure the success of the program? The non-profit's goal is to reach 100,000 students by 2020. The pie in the sky goal is that kids are so excited by STEM and supply chain that we eliminate the supply chain talent gap. If I bring it down to Earth, I think we have an opportunity to make a difference in the future with these kids. That's my personal goal and what drives me forward.

Cheryl Dalsin is the director of academic outreach for APICS. Prior to that, she was a senior technical program manager at Intel. She can be reached at [email protected].

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