IBM On-Demand Supply Chain Center
Through a Shared University Research (SUR) award from IBM - consisting of IBM software, eServer and storage technologies - the Broad School, under the leadership of Dr. David Closs, John H. McConnell Chair in Supply Chain Management, and IBM created The Center for On Demand Supply Chain Research. The IBM Supply Chain Laboratory serves as an environment for modeling and analysis of an on-demand supply chain. Broad School graduate students and faculty use the laboratory to study, simulate and test the key relationships in an end to end supply chain, focusing on the dynamic flow of information and the resulting interdependencies between them. Their work is expected to help IBM and other companies build dynamic supply chains that can sense and rapidly respond to changing customer demands and market conditions.
After establishing The Center for On Demand Supply Chain Research with the Broad School, IBM linked the lab, via an advanced computing grid, with other leading partner universities specializing in supply chain management, including The Smeal College of Business at Penn State University, the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, Smurfit School of Business at University College Dublin, and the National University of Singapore. The grid of interconnected laboratories - which is the first grid computing research project in supply chain management that IBM has undertaken in cooperation with academia - allows these universities to collaborate and conduct joint applied research and teaching across a group of interconnected laboratories.
"We are proud that IBM has recognized the Broad School's expertise in supply chain management," said Robert B. Duncan, the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Dean. "Corporate partnerships such as this offer our faculty unique opportunities for generating leading-edge knowledge and helps our students become better prepared to be strategic change leaders in their future roles."
Since its inception, the Broad School's Marketing and Supply Chain department has infused the lab's supply chain technology into its curriculum through Instructional Related Publications focused on using i2 Supply Chain Software and IBM WBI Business Process Modeler Software.
"With the development of the lab to date, and the excellent work that has resulted in curriculum development and integration for example, we have improved our pool of qualified graduate and undergraduate students for hiring into the ISC," said John Dischinger, director of IBM's Integrated Supply Chain (ISC). "Additionally, we are beginning to see the results from a focused research agenda and will continue to rely on MSU for a cornerstone of our research efforts on the 'Grand Challenges' we are and will be facing in the ISC."