“All you need to do is divide in teams and craft paper boats to begin with”, said Prof. Dilip Chajjed to kickstart the 8 sessions’ module on Supply Chain Management at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore. Prof. Chajjed teaches in University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and is the Executive Director of MS Programs at Department of Business Administration at UIUC. His one-week visit to Jaipuria, Indore had the PGDM students of Supply Chain Management undergo an interesting and intense learning experience.

The first day of the module saw Prof. Chajjed make students understand distribution processes and its challenges through paper boats and a case study on a German retailing division called Aldi. Students got in-depth understanding of value chain, product selection, product pricing and promotion, product quality, store operations, supply chain operations, purchasing, the back-office operations, international operations and competitors of Aldi.

The second day witnessed a simulation competition among the students wherein they had to play a Beer game. In a team of four, students were designated as producers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers so as to help them understand how intermediaries work for their own benefit and thus resulting in inefficient supply chain operations. It was followed by yet another exercise- a cupcake game. Students learnt the concept of overstocking and under stocking by the end of the session. In the words of Suyash Bhalerao, PGDM Class of 2019- “supply chain as a domain is intellectually stimulating however, the module made it even better for each one of us.”

Third day of the module was the day of discussing Zara from Harvard Business Review. “Empty racks at Zara don’t drive customers to other stores. Being out of stock in one item helps sell another,” remarks Prof. Chajjed while explaining the concept of bullwhip effect through which distribution channel forecasts supply channel inefficiencies to increase the response. The day ended with a discussion on ‘News Vendor Model’, which emphasized on deciding optimal order size and its tradeoffs.

The final day had two case studies- ‘Logistics of Mass Gathering: Kumbh Mela – Ujjain, India – 2016’ and ‘Halloran Metals,’ in store for students. While ‘Logistics of Mass Gathering: Kumbh Mela – Ujjain, India – 2016’, helped students understand the dynamics behind managing the fair efficiently it also helped them analyse it from projecting the percentage flow of pilgrims by an hour of the day, temporary facilities and transportation. They grasped the dimensions of demand and planning– the six entry points and temporal – a time of the day as concepts. Capacity planning, adaptive rerouting and moving queue models were also discussed. Later in the session, flexibility planning and case of ‘Halloran Metals’ was discussed. How Halloran Metals has been able to make profits in the steel industry of US was discussed with regards to various aspects like order winners, competition, marketing strategy, organizational structure and costs.

The 8 classes with Prof. Dilip Chajjed had Jaiuria Institute of management, indore’s students crack various mysteries behind logistics management and learnt from the popular turns and events of the 21st century.