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Research firm ranks top U.S. schools for supply chain technology

The Gartner subsidiary Software Advice says Penn State and University of Wisconsin provide the best education in supply chain technology.

There's no doubt that technology is playing an ever-growing role in supply chain management. But which educational institutions are doing the best job of teaching their students to use that technology?

Software Advice, a division of the Gartner research and analysis firm that provides advisory services to software buyers, has published a report analyzing the quality of U.S. universities' supply chain technology education at both the undergraduate and graduate level. This ranking is based on the extent to which the schools emphasize the teaching of technology, software, and quantitative tools used by supply chain professionals, as well as the variety and depth of this coursework. The final list of institutions includes 15 undergraduate and 15 graduate programs.


Pennsylvania State University, which has long had an extensive logistics and supply chain management program, ranks first for undergraduate education, while the lesser-known University of Western Michigan ranks second, due in large part to its requirement that undergrad supply chain students learn how to use such tools as enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing resource planning (MRP), and geographic information systems (GIS), among others. University of North Texas, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Tennessee ranked third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

At the graduate level, the top two schools are University of Wisconsin and University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. Next came Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in third through fifth place.

The entire report, including rankings for all of the schools and the reasoning behind them, is available here.

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CSCMP honors trailblazers with annual awards

Honoring supply chain professionals and companies for their contributions to the industry is a tradition at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals annual EDGE Conference. The following are some of the recognitions given out this year.

  • The 2024 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Heather Sheehan, owner of Crispy Concepts LLC, instructor with Penn State University, and board member and adjunct faculty member with the University of Denver’s Transportation & Supply Chain Institute.
  • Sheehan, along with Roger Penske, chairman of Penske Corp., were inducted into CSCMP’s Supply Chain Hall of Fame.
  • Travis Kupla, Ph.D, of the University of Arkansas, won the Doctoral Dissertation Award for his paper “How Supply Chains Respond to Disruptions: Three Essays on Responses to Operational, Geopolitical, and Natural Disaster Disruptions.”
  • The Bernard J. La Londe Best Paper Award was given to Matias G. Enz from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis, and Douglas M. Lambert from The Ohio State University for their paper “A Supply Chain Management Framework for Services.”
  • Wenting Li and Dr. Yimin Wang of Arizona State received the E. Grosvenor Plowman Award for their research paper, “A Procurement Advantage In Disruptive Times: New Perspectives On ESG Strategy And Firm Performance.”
  • The Teaching Innovation Award was given to Dr. Shane Schvaneveldt of Weber State University for his paper, “A Lean 5S Experiential Learning Game for Logistics and Supply Chain Management.”
To see a full list of honorees, please visit cscmp.org and click on the tab "Academia & Awards."