Collaborative Teaching and Collaborative Learning of Supply Chain Management
for Engineering and Business Students
Rong Pan, Ph.D., Department of Industrial Engineering
Adriano O. Solis, Ph.D., Department of Information and Decision Sciences
The University of Texas at El Paso
Introduction
In response to the opportunities and threats posed by the globalization of U.S.
manufacturing industry and the unique higher education challenges in the universities
at border regions like El Paso, we proposed in 2003 to the US Department of
Education’s FIPSE program in 2003 a project designed to integrate into the
engineering curriculum an international supply chain management (SCM) program
with an IT-based educational strategy. The project focuses on the business skill
preparation and industrial practice of Hispanic engineering students, who are
historically underrepresented in the upper echelons of U.S. companies. A grant was
awarded in the fall of 2003, which enabled us to jointly develop and team teach two
courses on supply chain management.
In an industrial setting, the supply chain encompasses all activities associated
with the flow and transformation of goods, services, as well as information. The fierce
competition in global markets, increasingly shorter product life cycles, and higher
customer expectations with respect to product capability and reliability, delivery lead
times, flexibility, and service have all caused business firms to focus on supply chain
management. As more and more manufacturing facilities of U.S. companies have
been deployed overseas, it is not difficult to see that today’s engineering students,
especially those studying industrial or manufacturing disciplines, have an urgent need
of obtaining the knowledge of global supply chain planning and operations. In the
1999 Critical Competency Gaps Report published by the Society of Manufacturing
Engineers, business knowledge and international perspective were the two most cited
areas where newly hired engineering graduates do not meet expectations for
professional competence, and the knowledge of supply chain management was ranked
as number one among all technical incompetence. The Industry-UniversityGovernment roundtable for Enhancing Engineering Education (IUGREEE) in the
1990’s identified that engineering reform should respond to the new manufacturing
paradigm where global markets demand mass customization of products and services
at relentlessly lower costs, and where revolutionary advances in information systems
drive industrial organizations to a tightened supplier-manufacturer-distributors
relationship and a new level of customer service. A Cornell University survey of 500
senior managers at Fortune 1000 companies also pointed out that many engineers lack
adequate managerial skills and the knowledge of supply/distribution and its relation to
production.
With the support of both FIPSE and the university, we offered two new
courses on the topic of supply chain management for students with engineering or
business major. The first course, Operational Models for Supply Chain Management,
was offered in the spring semester of 2004. Five engineering students (Industrial
Engineering majors) and eight business students (Production and Operations
Management majors) were enrolled. The second course, Tools and Techniques of
Supply Chain Management, was offered in the fall semester of 2004, with fifteen
engineering students (including four graduate students) and fourteen business students
taking the course. These mixed student groups have different educational
backgrounds and various understanding of supply chain management, which is
challenging to teaching.
Course Design
The first SCM course was designed to introduce students to the basic concepts
of supply chain network design and its impact on overall enterprise performance. The
emphasis was on the interaction between different entities within a supply chain,
effectiveness and efficiency of supply chain, demand forecasting, aggregate planning,
and simulation modeling. SimFlex, a network simulation software, was utilized to
illustrate many important concepts and techniques in supply chain management.
Following the learning path of “grabbing the concept and mastering the tool,” the
second SCM course emphasized the use of IT tools to manage, monitor, synchronize,
and optimize the materials and information flows within an organization, as well as
over a whole supply/demand network. Students were introduced to the SAP R/3
enterprise resource planning system, in order for them to better understand and
execute the business cycles of procurement and distribution, and to integrate several
business processes of a virtual trading company. Both courses combined traditional
lectures with industrial projects, plant tours, and seminars.
To broaden the scope of the courses and to expose students to the general
context of the materials learned in the classroom, a series of seminars were organized
along with these courses. To date, totally eleven seminars have been offered. They
have been attended not only by students from the SCM classes but also many
engineering and supply professionals from various regional, national, and global
organizations. Our invited speakers included Mr. Fred Montoya, Vice President for
Worldwide Fulfillment and Logistics at Dell Computers, Mr. Larry Graves, Director
of Global Supply Management at Delphi Automotive Systems, and Ms. Patricia
Wickham, President of the APICS Educational and Research Foundation, among
others. Besides gaining practical knowledge of SCM, our students are also benefited
by directly interacting with senior supply chain executives. Both courses required
students to conduct team-based projects, in which at least one business major and one
engineering major should be included in a team. Each team had an assigned company
to work with and applied the course materials in industrial case studies that were
presented in class. Some companies that we have been working with include General
Electric Medical Systems, Cardinal Health, and Keats Southwest.
Pre and Post Assessment
In order to gauge the impact of the two new courses, course assessment was
carefully planned and implemented. At the first meeting of each class, we handed out
a pre-course questionnaire, which asked for the students’ self-evaluation of their
knowledge in manufacturing and management, as well as their education background
and work experience. The questions come from the SME category of manufacturing
know-hows, which encompass the technical, business function, and system integration
aspects of a manufacturing enterprise, and the grading scale is from awareness (1) to
expert (5). At the last session of each semester, students were asked to fill out a
similar form of self-assessing their knowledge in these areas. The following graphs
show the pre- and post-assessment results of the second SCM course. We summarize
them by the student’s major, working experience, and whether or not he/she has taken
the first SCM course. As one can see fairly clearly, after the course all students felt
more confident on the manufacturing and management contents required by SME.
The knowledge gaps between engineering students and business students have been
significantly reduced. It is interesting to note that after the course engineering students
have even higher self-assessment value of their management skills than their fellow
students with business major.
Gap by major
Gap by major
4
3
3.5
2.5
2.09
2
1.88
2.9
3
3
2.95
2.82
1.96
1.78
2.5
b
1.5
b
2
e
e
1.5
1
1
0.5
0.5
0
0
knowledge in manufacturing systems
knowledge in manufacturing systems
knowledge in management
knowledge in management
Figure 1. Pre and Post Assessment Results by Majors
Gap by having or not having working experience
Gap by having or not having working experience
4
3
3.56
3.5
2.53
2.5
2
2.26
3
3.24
2.92
2.77
2.5
1.71
1.69
y
n
2
n
1.5
y
1.5
1
1
0.5
0.5
0
0
knowledge in manufacturing systems
knowledge in manufacturing systems
knowledge in management
knowledge in management
Figure 2. Pre and Post Assessment Results by Working Experience
Gap by having or not having working experience
Gap by having or not having SCM I
3
4
2.53
2.26
3
2
3.61
3.45
3.5
2.5
1.71
1.69
2.89
2.81
2.5
n
1.5
y
n
2
y
1.5
1
1
0.5
0.5
0
0
knowledge in manufacturing systems
knowledge in management
knowledge in manufacturing
knowledge in management
Figure 3. Pre and Post Assessment Results by Whether or not Taking SCM I
Lessons Learned
The pre-course assessment shows that students have different understandings
of supply chain concepts and issues in a modern organization. The common ground
can be reached after they learn applications in actual supply chain operations. On this
basis, besides supply chain simulation exercises in the classroom, we invited SCM
experts and practitioners from various industries to speak to students during the
semester. IT tools have been intensively used in classroom teaching and homework
assignments. These tools facilitate the teaching process and also promote the student’s
self-learning. The most rewarding experience for students has been the team project,
in which there are at least one engineering student and one business student in each
team. In this way, the students learn to communicate with people of different
background and to appreciate viewpoints from other perspectives. This experiment
suggests that students will gain knowledge more effectively and efficiently through
multiple source channels and through practical applications.
Significant work is needed to be carefully planned out even before the
semester starts, so the mutual understanding and the commitment from both faculty
members involved in the team teaching effort are very important. Our experience
points out that the work load of these courses could not and should not be split to half
and half for the two faculty members. We prepare the courses together and capitalize
on the strengths of each other. For example, we organized the course content module
by module; while one faculty took the lead in a specific module in terms of preparing
instruction notes and presentation slides, we reviewed the material together. Since
both of us can teach the material, it gives us more flexibility to attend conferences or
other events out of our busy teaching schedule. Based on our individual connections
to industries, one faculty took the most responsibility of organizing the seminar series;
while the other one took in charge of student projects.
It has been our experience that it is not altogether difficult to invite
professionals to come to campus to deliver talks to students. Actually, companies
have outreach programs which may be used to cover the expenses associated with this
type of activity. In particular, some companies like to use this campus visit to recruit
potential students for either internship or job positions. In addition, the industry
connection can be strengthened by the performance of our best students. We see that
some companies are willing to offer more student projects and some are seeking
further collaboration with the school after they are pleased with the value added by
our students.
Conclusion
Engineering education has been facing a big challenge as globalization
becomes the inevitable trend for U.S. industry. This change has already had a
profound impact on UTEP engineering students. Through this pilot project, we
experimented with a holistic educational approach to answer this challenge. The
innovative educational tools that we integrate in this project include team teaching,
IT-assisted learning, and hands-on industrial practice. We emphasize on practical
training with understanding of basic concepts. This type of training is extremely
intensive, considering that it is a combination of lectures with software training,
seminars, and industrial case studies. This holistic approach of teaching newly
emerged topics has been found to be effective. Students are equipped with powerful
and practical skills for preparing their future careers. Particularly for Hispanic
students, their advantage of bilingual and bicultural background can be capitalized on
in international manufacturing and supply chain management.