Learning & Growing: Integrating Technology Undergraduates into the Development of an Industrial Case Study

A national industrial distribution association approached us to develop a case study for its association members. The national association assumed responsibility for identifying educational needs of upper level, mid level, and lower level personnel in the industry. In the previous year, a case study had been developed to educate upper level managers in the strategic nature of distribution in their industry. The association found that upper level management had a great learning experience and wanted lower level workers to have the same opportunity to refine and enhance their knowledge on making inventory and warehousing decisions. The project objective was to develop a case study that would be used in a weekend workshop to educate operations and customer service personnel involved in making logistics-related decisions. The mid level operations and customer service personnel were to attend a two-day workshop to learn basic terminology, analyze the case study, and refine their current knowledge surrounding their job duties.

This article describes the process of developing a case study for a national trade association and integrating learning opportunities for undergraduate technology students at Purdue University. The needs assessment phase of this project became an Inventory and Warehouse Management course project. The educational goal for the weekend industrial workshop, based on the case study, was to accomplish the following:

• Be valuable for companies with $5 million to $400 million in sales.
• Address the environment where employees typically handle 3,000 to 8,000 stock-keeping units.
• Teach the attendees in a highly participative setting.
• Incorporate small group activities.

The educational materials to be developed for the weekend workshop were a new case study, workbook, supporting reading materials, PowerPoint presentation, glossary of common terms, and an evaluation instrument.

The topic areas to be covered in the case study and the weekend workshop were:

• Inventory management and control.
• Product backorder and returned goods.
• Facility selection and layout.
• New product introduction.
• Order fulfillment routines.
• Selection of transportation modes.
• Multiple branch issues.
• New technology adoption.
• Human resource management.
• Key productivity measures.
• International issues.