OM in the News: The Top 10 Most Dangerous Jobs in America

Every 104 minutes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says an American worker loses their life on the job. While some of us might consider a bad day at work to be a crashed computer or a long class or meeting, thousands of Americans face life-or-death stakes every day they begin their jobs.  From the peaks of skyscraper steel to the depths of the Pacific Northwest forests, here are the 10 most dangerous jobs in the U.S. today, according to Industrial Safety & Hygiene News (Feb, 26, 2026)

1. Logging Workers

Fatality Rate: 98.9 per 100,000 workers. Primary Cause of Death: Contact with objects/equipment (falling trees).  The Hazard: Falling trees and heavy machinery

2. Fishing and Hunting Workers

Fatality Rate: 86.9 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Transportation incidents (drowning/capsizing).  The Hazard: Drowning and vessel capsizing

3. Roofers

Fatality Rate: 51.8 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Falls to a lower level.  The Hazard: Gravity.

4. Refuse & Recyclable Collectors

Fatality Rate: 41.4 per 100,000 workers. Primary Cause of Death: Transportation (struck-by vehicle).  The Hazard: Being struck by passing motorists.

5. Aircraft Pilots & Flight Engineers

Fatality Rate: 31.3 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Crashes in small aircraft.  The Hazard: Mechanical failure or weather in bush/regional flying

6. Construction Helpers

Fatality Rate: 27.4 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Falls and exposure to harmful substances.  The Hazard: “The Fatal Four” (Falls, Struck-by, Caught-in, Electrocution)

7. Heavy & Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers 

Fatality Rate: 26.8 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Transportation incidents (roadway collisions).  The Hazard: Highway collisions and fatigue

8. Grounds Maintenance Workers

Fatality Rate: 20.5 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Falls and landscaping equipment.  The Hazard: Equipment entanglement and heat stroke

9. Agricultural Workers

Fatality Rate: 20.2 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Transportation and contact with machinery.  The Hazard: Tractor rollovers and silo entrapment

10. Iron and Steel Workers

Fatality Rate: 19.8 per 100,000 workers.  Primary Cause of Death: Falls, slips, and trips.  The Hazard: Falls and swinging heavy loads.

 

As we see, logging is the most dangerous profession by a massive margin. Logging workers are nearly 33 times more likely to die on the job than the average worker. The national average across all jobs is 3.3 per 100,000 workers.

While ” Construction Helpers” are No. 6, the broader construction industry saw the highest total number of deaths (1,032), even if their per-capita rate is lower than loggers. Nearly 11% of fatal falls result from a height of 30 feet or higher.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Ergonomics is an important part of job design (see Chapter 10 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text). How could it be used to improve safety in these jobs?
  2. Can the physical environment be changed to make any of the jobs safer?

 

 

Guest Post: Food Processing Ingredients

Prof. Howard Weiss shares his insights monthly. Howard created the Excel OM and POM software that we provide free with our book.

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer article (February 19, 2026) reports that “The grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has lashed out at the Hershey Co., accusing the candy company of hurting the Reese’s brand by shifting to cheaper ingredients in many products.” 

In prior years consumers expressed dissatisfaction when Nutella reduced the amount of cocoa in its product. One reason for the change in the recipes for these two products is the high cost of cocoa. Clearly, a change in a recipe will affect inventory, material (ingredient) costs, and the supply chain.

The most infamous recipe change is probably “New Coke” which was introduced in 1985. Consumer backlash forced Coke to revert to its original recipe. Recently, Coke announced it will add a new product made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup.

Food taste and recipes can vary for a number of legitimate reasons. The recipe for Twinkies was changed in order to extend its shelf life from 25 days to 45 days. Butterfinger took an alternative approach and double-wrapped its candy. Several food processors have changed recipes in order to eliminate certain food dyes or additives or reduce sodium, including Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Turkey Hill ice cream.

The same product may have a different recipe for sales at bulk stores rather than supermarkets. Colas may have a different amount of corn syrup in bulk stores.

Sometimes recipe changes are inadvertent. In one case consumers complained about the taste of meals they cooked using 4C Italian Bread Crumbs. 4C investigated and found that trace amounts of cinnamon were in the bread crumbs and should not have been. There are many examples of bacteria being in processed food which would affect the health of the person eating the food. This is different. There is a processing problem but it will NOT cause health issues just taste issues.

The repercussions of food quality are different than the repercussions of food safety. Food safety problems can lead to recalls, liabilities, brand damage and penalties. Failure to maintain taste can result in brand damage and product returns.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. Identify other products in which change resulted in complaints or safety issues.

2. What are the main changes these days to food products?

 

OM Podcast #46: Logistics, Circularity & Vertical Integration at East Penn Manufacturing

In our latest podcast episode Barry Render and Misty Blessley speak with Harry Ziff, VP of Corporate Logistics at East Penn Manufacturing, one of the world’s largest lead‑battery producers. Harry shares highlights from his 37‑year supply chain career and explains how East Penn’s unique structure allows it to excel in reliability, sustainability, and customer service.

Harry discusses East Penn’s deep vertical integration, including in‑house lead refining, plastic molding, and battery case manufacturing. He also describes the company’s closed‑loop recycling system, where nearly 100% of batteries are collected, processed, and reused.  The episode also dives into East Penn’s large private fleet, which enables direct‑store delivery, consistent service, and strong customer relationships.

TRANSCRIPT LINK
A Word document of this podcast will download by clicking the transcript link above.
Prof. Misty Blessley
Prof. Barry Render
Harry Ziff

 

 

 

 

 

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OM in the News: One Way to Power New AI Data Centers

Where is the energy to power the hundreds of new data centers that are popping up to run artificial intelligence demands coming from? “In the battle for AI dominance, every engine of the economy is getting recruited into the fight—including jet engines'” writes The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 18, 2026). 

Jet engines are a natural fit. Power equipment giants GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries  already sell power turbines—known as aeroderivatives—that are modeled after these very jet engines. Aircraft engine companies such as GE Aerospace , Howmet Aerospace and Woodward also sell land-based aeroderivative turbines or components.

Yet designing the turbine, which keeps as much of the original jet engine features as possible, is a roughly 18-month undertaking.  Instead, it only takes 30 to 45 days to convert a plane’s jet engine to a power-generating turbine. (There are 2 main modifications to convert an aircraft engine to a land-based natural gas turbine. One is replacing the fuel nozzles to utilize natural gas instead of jet fuel. The other is replacing the large fan on the front of the flight engine with a much smaller fan).

Retired aircraft, at an Air Force base near Tucson, Ariz

A company can remanufacture jet-engine parts with a few years of remaining life for use in power turbines, where they can operate for many additional years. Narrow-body jet engines experience higher stress from repeated takeoffs and landings. Power turbines can run as peakers—turning on only when demand surges—or continuously as baseload. Either way, they accumulate less wear and tear.

About 1,600 commercial aircraft engines are retired every year. If a third of those engines get converted into turbines, that would represent about 13 GW of capacity, or more than a quarter of the existing global natural gas turbine capacity.

AI-obsessed tech giants are planning to spend more than $700 billion in capital expenditures this year. The lure of that cash pile will generate a lot of creativity in the power sector.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why is there a need to convert jet engines?
  2. Discuss the growth of data centers and the demands they create. (See our recent post on that topic.)

Guest Post: FedEx Network 2.0– The Real-World Challenges of Facility Closures and Location Strategy

Dr. Jon Jackson is Associate Professor of Operations Management  and the MSBA Director in the School of Business at Providence College.

In 2022, FedEx announced its “Network 2.0” initiative, designed to streamline and integrate the resources of its Express, Ground, and Freight operations. This project was initially estimated to cost $2 billion, would result in the closure of 100 stations, and was targeted for completion by fiscal year 2027.

As of this month, February, 2026, FedEx has closed more than 200 stations, with projections indicating a total of 475 closures by the end of 2027 as part of the Network 2.0 initiative. This accounts for nearly 30% of the company’s facility footprint across the United States and Canada, writes Supply Chain Dive (Feb. 13, 2026). 

As discussed in Ch. 8 (Location Strategies) in your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook, location strategy involves not only selecting new sites but also making tough calls about which existing facilities to consolidate or close. For FedEx, network streamlining was prompted by significant overlap between Express and Ground operations. Scott Ray, the COO-elect for U.S. and Canada surface operations explained, “The concept is pretty straightforward: Our customers don’t need both an Express and a Ground truck in the same neighborhood on the same day, and they don’t need to separate their Express and Ground packages for two separate pickups.”

One of the main challenges for FedEx during this transformation is maintaining high service levels amid such a significant network overhaul. The company has addressed this challenge by creating dedicated routes for high-priority services and customers, as well as factoring in market-level characteristics.

(A regularly updated list of FedEx station closures is available on Supply Chain Dive). 

 

Classroom Discussion Questions

  1. FedEx has already closed twice as many stations as originally projected in 2022. What factors could have led to this outcome? Do you see this as a cause for concern, or could it indicate greater-than-expected benefits?
  2. In your local metro area, what factors should FedEx consider when deciding which stations might be closed, if any?

OM in the News: The Memory-Chip Shortage

Memory is one of the tech world’s most ubiquitous and essential components that come in 2 major types. DRAM handles more fleeting, immediate tasks like using apps. The other kind, called NAND flash memory, provides long-term storage for photos, videos and other data. And there has been a 7-fold increase in contract prices for DRAM and NAND flash in the past year.

Facing soaring memory-chip prices, the world’s biggest electronics companies are staring at a list of unpalatable responses:(1) charging consumers more, (2) eating the costs or (3) rejiggering product specs. Such is the supply-chain disruption wrought by the global drive into AI, which requires fleets of data centers with servers needing gargantuan amounts of memory, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 13, 2026). 

The memory crunch comes at an inopportune time for companies like Nintendo.

That has caused supply to dry up for the makers of smartphones, PCs, gaming consoles and various other electronic gadgets, and triggered a historic price uptick since early last year that is higher than any increase seen before.

Dell has raised prices for some commercial laptops by as much as 30%, while budget PCs from rival Acer now carry several gigabytes less of multitasking memory. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi recently discontinued the lower-memory variant of its new midtier device and raised prices. To summarize: A tough year for smartphones, PCs and game consoles is getting worse. Projected shipment declines are now stumbling deeper. PCs, with memory representing as much as 30% of their total costs, are particularly vulnerable.

With investments into AI infrastructure remaining hot, the prospects of memory prices falling soon don’t appear high. Supply is expected to remain tight through 2028.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What is the underlying issue?
  2. What can manufacturers of PCs, smartphones, and game consoles do to protect themselves?

 

OM in the News: AI Push Is Costing a Lot More Than the Moon Landing

It’s bigger than the railroad expansion of the 1850s, the Apollo space program that put astronauts on the moon in the 1960s and the decadeslong build-out of the U.S. interstate highway system that ended in the 1970s.

We’re talking about the data centers now being built and financed by some of the world’s biggest companies in the artificial-intelligence boom. Four U.S. tech giants—Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and  Google—are planning to spend $670 billion to build out AI infrastructure this year alone as they scramble to increase the computing power needed to operate and scale their AI-related endeavors.

And if you compare this spending to some of the biggest capital efforts in U.S. history by percentage of gross domestic product, you can see exactly how staggering the figures are, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 9, 2026). In fact, it’s dwarfed only by the Louisiana Purchase, completed in 1803, which doubled the size of the U.S. and consumed 3% of the GDP.  (The AI buildout is projected at 2.1% of GDP, while railroads in the 1850s were 2%, the US highway system was 0.4%, and the Apollo space program was 0.2%).

The four companies’ capital spending has been increasing as a percentage of their annual revenue the past few years. In 2026, Meta’s spending could amount to more than 50% of its sales for the first time ever.

How is this build-out an OM issue? First, as we discuss in Chapter 2, these four companies are betting that they will attain competitive advantage by competing on low-cost and response. Second, our chapter on sustainability (Supp. 5) points out the costs of carbon footprints, which data centers generate heavily. Third, as we note in the chapter on location strategies (Ch. 8), the centers locate where power is cheap and plentiful.

As of late 2025, Northern Virginia has 64 data centers under construction, solidifying its position as the world’s largest data center market. The region hosts over 550 existing facilities.  They consume massive amounts of power, comparable to the total usage of large states like Minnesota.

Classroom discussion issues:

  1. Discuss the plusses and minuses of this massive construction trend.
  2. What do the builders hope to obtain?

Good OM Reading: Supply Chains as a Source of Competitive Differentiation

A new report from the Kearney consulting group (Feb. 4, 2026), called The Top Five Supply Chain Bets for 2026, concludes that as customers punish inconsistency faster than ever, companies that can deliver reliability will expand market share. Kearney offers this analysis:

This forces a shift from one supply chain to a portfolio of capabilities designed around distinct value propositions including speed, reliability, customization, cost-to-serve, and compliance. Where commercial commitments are made in isolation from operations, the consequences surface later through margin erosion, excess inventory, and lost customers.

Supply chain becomes the operating core of the customer promise, and leadership must be explicit about where it will overperform and equally clear about where performance ambition can be more modest by design.

Leading organizations are becoming more deliberate about how they serve each channel, market, and customer, including the trade-offs required and their operational implications. Align those choices with differentiated supply chain capabilities for each segment and translate them into targets for the core KPIs (service, cost, cash, risk). Finally, leverage the integrated planning and execution process to deliver consistently against those objectives.

Another area of concern is AI as it moves along the continuum from experimentation to earnings impact. Kearney offers the following analysis:

In 2026, many pilots will fail to progress beyond experimentation. The root causes are predictable: unclear value cases, poor data quality, fragmented technology stacks, and pilots that were never designed to scale.

AI in supply chains needs to be treated as an industrial capability, with clear ownership, governance, monitoring, and integration into day-to-day processes. Organizations that remain in experimentation are accumulating prototypes and skepticism, while those that focus are translating AI into measurable improvements in cost, cash, service, and risk.

Leading organizations are managing AI use cases as a portfolio, with explicit scale and stop gates. A small number of use cases that materially affect service, cost, cash, or risk are being industrialized, while others are time-boxed with clear exit criteria. Investment is concentrating on priorities with the highest enterprise impact, including decision speed, resilience, and sharpening competitive supply chain advantage.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How might AI be used in supply chain management?
  2. Why does Kearney think supply chains are becoming the source of competitive differentiation?

OM in the News: The Inventory Return Scam

Retailers nationwide have seen online returns skyrocket over the past four years after rolling out generous returns policies to attract customers amid a pandemic-driven surge in e-commerce. The returns policies have helped change shopping habits: Consumers have grown accustomed to ordering items online in several sizes and colors, then returning what they don’t want.

Shoppers last year returned 17.6% of items they purchased online, valued at more than $247 billion and more than double the percentage of goods returned in 2019. Returns have become such an entrenched part of online commerce that companies have sprung up to handle the growing business. UPS acquired one of those specialized operators, Happy Returns, for $465 million.

The ease of shipping goods back has also given criminals new tools to exploit in an online environment in which buyers don’t need to interact with store employees–and the scale and organization of the fraud is getting more ambitious, and organized.  More than $100 billion in merchandise was returned fraudulently in the U.S. last year, estimated to be 9-15% of the $850 million returned goods retailers received in 2024-2025, reports Supply Chain Brain (Feb. 2, 2026). 

Organized criminal groups “are taking advantage of the omnichannel retail environment,” said on industry expert. In some cases, fraudsters are returning knockoffs in place of designer goods and sending back boxes full of bricks or other filler rather than the original items. Others are manipulating shipping labels to receive a refund just from mailing back an empty envelope. Fraudsters marketing their services on Telegram and through other websites often sell their services in return for a cut of customers’ refunds.

Apparel retailer PacSun recently noticed a sharp increase in returns of online purchases, including one customer who had returned some 250 orders worth $24,000.  PacSun had issued the refunds, but the company never received the actual merchandise at its warehouse. Instead, workers found “used or different merchandise returned in the box, or even empty shoeboxes.”

Some retailers such as Amazon are taking legal action. It just sued the refunding-services group REKK that it claimed was “responsible for stealing millions of dollars of products from Amazon’s online stores through systematic refund abuse.”

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How can the quality control inspections engaged during returns processing be defrauded?
  2. How has e-commerce made this fraud easier?

OM Podcast #45: Inside Purchasing at Temple University

In our newest podcast episode, Barry Render and Misty Blessley sit down with Donna Schweibenz, former Senior Director of Purchasing at Temple University, for a fascinating look inside one of higher education’s most complex operational functions.

Donna brings 26 years of experience leading a centralized purchasing department responsible for everything from office supplies to cadavers for medical training—yes, cadavers! She shares how universities must navigate wide‑ranging procurement categories, strict compliance requirements, and unexpected challenges that arise even from seemingly simple purchases.

In this episode, Barry, Misty, and Donna discuss:

  • The sheer variety of goods and services a major university must procure, and the challenges the centralized purchasing team faces.
  • The creation of a three‑university purchasing alliance between Temple, Penn State, and Pitt, and how collaboration led to better pricing and efficiencies.
  • What people often misunderstand about purchasing, including bid thresholds, contracts, warranties, lead times, vendor vetting, and how essential communication is to prevent operational issues.

 

TRANSCRIPT LINK

Donna Schweibenz

A Word document of this podcast will download by clicking the word Transcript above.

Prof . Misty Blessley
Prof. Barry Render

 

 

 

 

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OM in the News: The Short Life Cycle of Amazon Go

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we posted the news that Amazon was opening 57 Amazon Go cashierless bricks and mortar store grocery sores.

We even highlighted this exciting digital-driven advancement in an OM in Action box in Chapter 5 (see page 175). But as we also point out in in our discussion of product life cycles in that chapter (Design of Goods and Services): “Products are born. They live and they die.”

The e-commerce giant just announced that “its branded stores failed to deliver a distinctive customer experience with an economic model that could be scaled up successfully.” This marks the latest pivot in Amazon’s more than decadelong effort to break into physical retail, reports The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 28, 2026).

Amazon Go’s convenience stores, which let customers check out electronically without waiting in line, also never resonated with shoppers on a large scale, and the company has trimmed its fleet by more than half since 2023. The company does, however, license its Just Walk Out technology to retailers at more than 360 locations in five countries, including colleges and universities, sports arenas, hospitals and airports.

Amazon plans to continue experimenting with bricks-and-mortar retail. The company just won approval to open its largest-ever store in Orland Park, Ill., where it will sell groceries, general merchandise and prepared foods. The megastore, which at 230,000 square feet will be big enough to fit nearly two Target stores, will incorporate in-person and digital shopping.

Product life cycle can span a few days (a concert t-shirt), months (seasonal fashions) years (NFL Madden football), or decades (Boeing 737). Amazon Go lasted eight years.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why did Amazon Go fail?
  2. Name a few other products that also exhibited short life cycles.

OM in the News: AI Makes a Fundamental Shift in Manufacturing

For two decades, manufacturing has been defined by a relentless pursuit of optimization. We automated assembly lines (Ch. 9), digitized records and built predictive maintenance models (Ch. 17), all in the service of marginal gains in efficiency.

While this approach yielded significant returns, we have reached the ceiling of what traditional, rule-based automation can achieve. “In 2026, the industry is undergoing a fundamental shift toward a model of agentic enablement,” says the head of Google Cloud, Praveen Rao in Industry Week (Jan.22, 2026).

Rao says this isn’t just a technical upgrade; it is a new industrial model where AI moves from a tool that recommends to an agent that achieves. It also isn’t about reducing headcount, but about transforming operators into “super-users”: who are empowered by AI to solve more complex problems and drive higher value. He makes 3 predictions:

The Agentic Supply Chain: Beyond Prediction to Execution Historically, manufacturers have been forced to lock up vast amounts of capital in finished goods, essentially “betting” on demand forecasts. Agentic AI changes this math by allowing production to align dynamically with real-time customer intent. Traditional predictive models could warn of a supplier disruption, but it still required a human to spend days rerouting logistics. In 2026, AI agents will close this loop. Systems will be empowered to detect a tier-2 supplier failure in the middle of the night.

The Rise of the Technocrat Entering the era of the Technocrat, the factory worker of the future will no longer be measured by analog tools of the past—the hammers and the screwdrivers, but by mastery of generative AI for rapid troubleshooting and agentic AI for process orchestration.

Hyper-Personalized Intelligence on the Shop Floor  The AI agents of the future will possess “long-term memory,” understanding the specific context and historical preferences of every shop-floor operator. This is agentic AI acting as a personalized performance coach, delivering the right insight to the right person at the exact moment of need.

Rao concludes: “The transition from fragmented automation to integrated, agentic systems is the new industrial paradigm. The companies that fail to adopt an agent-first mindset will not just fall behind; they will find themselves competing against living factories that can think, adapt, and execute 24/7 without friction.”

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Explain what an AI agent does.
  2. Give an example of personalized intelligence on the shop floor.

Guest Post: Rethinking the Solar Energy Value Chain Through Circularity

 

Dr. Yagmur Arioz recently completed her PhD at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University.

As the world gradually turns away from fossil fuels and shifts its focus toward solar energy, a critical question arises: Is the life cycle of these technologies truly sustainable? What happens to solar panels at the end of their useful life, or can we prevent waste before panels even reach that point?

The traditional “take–make–use–dispose” paradigm is no longer viable. In the context of solar energy, the circular economy must be embraced as an
intelligent system that optimizes energy fluctuations and integrates energy flows across the entire value chain, from production to consumption.

Although solar panels are often portrayed as green heroes in the fight against climate change, they still carry the risk of generating waste throughout manufacturing, installation, and operation. Overcoming this risk requires adopting the “cradle-to-cradle” approach. This vision emphasizes a value chain in which materials are continuously recovered, effectively eliminating the notion of waste and the need for disposal.

Designing components to be reusable, detachable, and upgradable requires questioning actual needs and fundamentally transforming operational models. However, because short-term cost concerns often overshadow these models, they  are neglected hidden champions of the circular economy. Despite UN recommendations, uncertainties regarding the
sustainable management and circularity of solar energy continue in many countries. What is required is the establishment of common standards and the alignment of collection and recycling methodologies across countries.

Discussions on circularity in solar energy often overlook the social dimension. Yet this dimension serves as a powerful lever for
sustaining more livable societies and addressing poverty in all its forms. From China to Africa, and from certain regions of Europe to developing economies, inspiring examples of this transformation are already emerging. When circular solar energy strategies are integrated into impoverished regions, they not only provide an energy solution but also meet electricity needs through circular approaches, directly improving quality of life through access to clean water, sanitation, health, and education.

If we stopped viewing solar panels merely as technical devices and instead reimagined them as instruments of social transformation, embedded within circular economy principles, could we not address not only the global energy crisis but also structural inequality, powered by the sun itself? What may appear today as modest steps and incremental decisions may, in fact, carry the spark of a profound transformation.

Teaching Tip: Why Quality Inspections Often Fail

We all know that students have trouble staying focused for a long lecture, even with the great job we all try to do. So try to find a short activity that will make a teaching point, break up the class for a few minutes, and get all the students enthused.  Here is something you may want to try in Chapter 6, Managing Quality. It takes about 10 minutes.

In this chapter, we have suggested that building quality into a process and its people is difficult. In the old days, inspection was the main form of quality control. But inspection may not catch all the errors, and it may be expensive. To indicate just how difficult inspections can be, ask your students to turn to the OM in Action box on page 234, called “Inspecting the Boeing 787”.

Ask them to each count the number of E’s (both cap and lower case), including those in the title. This should be a pretty easy inspection job, I think, and I offer a crisp $10 bill to the first student to give me the correct count. That usually gets their attention!

As they each finish, I ask them to shout out their count and I do a tally on the board. There is amazing variation and I only have to shell out the reward in maybe one out of five classes. The answer, by the way, is in the Instructor’s Solutions Manual, as discussion question #18.

If you can share a class exercise of your own, we would be very happy to publish it as a Guest Post.

Teaching Tip: Advice to Your Supply Chain Students

 

Prof. Darrell Edwards

Darrell Edwards, supply-chain professor at U. Tennessee and former COO of La-Z-Boy, shares professional wisdom for new graduates in Industry Week (Jan. 14, 2026). Darrell was also our guest on OM Podcast #37, speaking on the topic of global supply chain vulnerabilities.

  1. Build a Plan To efficiently increase your early career success, have a plan.  List your career goals for the first year and your objectives for assimilating successfully into your supply chain role.  A widely cited study on goal setting says, “you become 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams simply by writing them down on a daily basis.”  Regardless of your career objectives, put your goals on paper, set timelines for their achievement, and review and access them frequently.

2. Attitude Matters Most  Most companies will hire and promote aspiring leaders who collaborate well and are good team players with a “can-do” attitude.  Of course, you must possess basic managerial and leadership skills, but having a positive attitude goes a long way. Standout qualities could include always coming to work early or typically being the first to volunteer for a necessary but unglamorous project.  Companies promote attitudes.

3. Take a Line Job Don’t be afraid to take a job in a warehouse, a factory, or in a logistics hub; it will help accelerate your supply chain career. These skills are critical if you aspire to lead within a supply chain. It’s unlikely you will be able to land a significant corporate role in supply chain leadership without having also worked a line job.

4. Know the Business It’s OK if you don’t know all the specifics of the business when you start a role; as a new leader, you’re not expected to. That doesn’t give you a free pass not to learn it, and quickly.  Refine your skills in areas you understand but aggressively throw yourself into supply chain functions where you are weak.

5. Find a Mentor.  A mentor can help shorten the cultural learning curve and help you navigate the company “landmines.”  A mentor is in the unique position to offer advice on what to do—and most important, what not to do.  That person can help you develop the right questions to ask and advise you on your career plan.

6. Deliver Results Whatever the task, you must be prepared to deliver results and work to develop a reputation for doing so. Reputations are built early in a career, and once built, they are hard to change.