Beer is a serious business. And we’re not just talking about having a few pints at the local pub. Graduate students in the supply chain management degree program studied the beer industry as part of a research project last semester for ABInBev in conjunction with Olin’s Boeing Center for Technology, Information and Manufacturing (BCTIM).

Masters in Supply Chain Management students Yucong Li, Weiyi Tang, Pu Zhang, and Junyan Zhang, MBA student Chris Walling and operations management Ph.D. student Seung Hwan Jung, under the active supervision and expert advice of the BCTIM Director and professor of supply chain management, Dr. Panos Kouvelis, engaged in a logistics efficiencies improvement project with global brewer, ABInBev.

The team provided solutions to improve operations logistics between the brewer, their contracted trucking companies, and the network of their wholesalers in a project entitled “Shipment Optimization at AB/InBev”. The team’s recommendations and spreadsheet tools, after implementation by the company, will result in higher shipment volumes on any given day without the need for increased trucking capacities, and with potential labor cost reduction at the shipping docks.

Click here to read more about the project scope.

Preparing professionals for key supply chain positions is a BCTIM priority. BCTIM’s experiential opportunities via mini-consulting projects with its member companies are grooming the next generation of supply chain leaders from Olin Business School’s Master of Science in Supply Chain Management (MSSCM) and MBA students specializing in operations management and supply chains. The students on each mini-consulting team tackle critical technology, information and supply chain issues, and work to find innovative solutions to member companies’ operational and management challenges.

Five to seven student teams are assembled each semester to tackle research projects with BCTIM’s key member companies like Monsanto, BE Aerospace, Boeing, Edward Jones, Emerson, Sigma Aldrich and more.