Wharton Supply Chain Conference: Shedding Light on a Best Kept Secret

December 14, 2012

The Supply Chain, despite being the backbone of every single corporation, is the best kept secret in the business world. Companies are always written about for their strategic, marketing or legal issues, but hardly do we hear about the phenomenon that is fundamentally responsible for their success (or failure thereof) – the supply chain.

No doubt that several C-suite executives have supply chain optimization on their speed dial.  But why is it that these insights hardly get out to the vast majority? Only those that somehow picked up the concept can get more involved and benefit from it. It’s strange that such a game-changing business application is not effectively publicized – leaving its potential largely untapped.

The inaugural Wharton Supply Chain Conference puts this macroscopic problem into perspective. And it does it through renowned senior executives of the world’s finest firms including Google, Samsung, Amazon, IBM, PepsiCo, and Boeing.

This truly prestigious conference was the first of its kind in the history of the Wharton School and attracted more than 1000 students across all majors and degrees in less than two weeks.

I founded the organization last semester having noticed a lack of practical exposure to the supply chain outside the classroom. This also meant I was going against the tide because there’s a dominance of finance and consulting concepts & careers at Wharton and operations/supply chain was definitely not a buzz word (maybe even considered a bit boring!)

After the conference, students were seen pulling out articles about supply chain and flooding the club’s inbox with what this phenomenon really means and why it matters. I’m so happy to have been a part of this conference and to increase interest in this remarkable area.

Ridhima is a current M&T senior in the Class of 2013. She is majoring in Systems Science Engineering within Penn Engineering and concentrating in Management in the Wharton School.