On Thursday January 17, 2013, the annual MIT Global SCALE Network Poster Session will take place on the MIT campus in Cambridge. This event is a unique networking opportunity as it showcases thesis projects currently being conducted by professional master’s students in collaboration with company partners. There will be over 100 students from the MIT SCALE Network spanning all four academic programs: MIT Supply Chain Management Program (SCM), MIT Zaragoza Master in Supply Chain (ZLOG), MIT Malaysia Master of Science in Supply Chain (MSCM) and the Graduate Certificate in Supply Chain and Logistics (GCLOG). 

As always we have a fascinating lineup of thesis projects being worked on by our students.  What’s different from other programs is that these are real projects with real people at real companies.  We have several students working with a large agriculture-chemical company to use big data to forecast demand for specialized fertilizers.  Two students are traveling to Africa to determine how to control the price of critical medicines so it is affordable down to the local villagers. A large grocery retailer has two students re-designing their inbound supply network from Latin America. A top 5 pharmaceutical company has asked our students to evaluate different supply chain strategies for branded vs. generic products. 

Several students are helping a famous luxury goods retailer explore the use of free trade zones and bonded warehouses in their inbound supply chain.  Students have also engaged in a project to determine the optimal supply base for a multinational oil and gas corporation. In addition there are several humanitarian focused projects, such as the endeavor by two students to design a way to measure the capacity of response organizations to meet the needs of disaster victims. In all for the MIT Global Scale network 40+ projects have been initiated across our centers in the US, Latin America, Spain, and Malaysia.