CELDi's Spring 2016 Industrial Advisory Board Meeting and Research Symposium

The Center for Excellence in Logistics and Distribution (CELDi) in the Department of Industrial Engineering hosted its spring 2016 Industrial Advisory Board Meeting and Research Symposium at the MODEX Supply Chain Show at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., on April 5-6. The CELDi meeting drew together faculty and students from five partner CELDi sites and industry leaders from six membership companies.

The meeting kicked off with peer mentoring, which has been a well-received activity for several years. This allows students to spend one-on-one time with industry leaders to ask questions, learn about the industry and careers beyond college. A reception and poster session followed. During the poster session the students present project posters to industry members. Each poster was evaluated and submitted with remarks. The student with the best poster was then presented with an award. Both students and industry leaders agree this dedicated time spent together allows them both time to connect and learn from each other. This year's student poster award was presented to graduate student Payam Parsa from the University of Arkansas for his poster "A Decision Support Tool for Partner Evaluation in Continuous Replenishment Program (CRP)." Payam's faculty adviser is professor Manuel Rossetti from the Industrial Engineering Department.

The industry and research presentations took place the following day. Jeffrey Arbogast with Air Liquide presented "A Suite of Supply Chain Optimization Tools: Insights Gained from Academic Research to Worldwide Industrial Deployment."

The faculty research presentations are the focus of the CELDi meeting. Completed projects are presented by the faculty researcher/primary investigator of that project. This year's projects included:

• "A Decision Support Tool for Partner Evaluation in Continuous Replenishment Program (CRP)," by Manuel Rossetti for Covidien;
• "Repair Prioritization with respect to Inventory Requirements" by James Noble for The Boeing Company;
• "Army Stationing Analysis" by Gregory Parnell, and doctoral student Kristin Yearkey for The Center of Army Analysis;
• "A Decision Tool for Identifying Critical Nodes in an LTL Network" by Chase Rainwater and Shengfan Zhang for Arcbest Technologies;
• "Reducing Discrepancies Between Production and Shipment Planning" by Ronald McGarvey and Jim Noble for Anheuser Busch;
• "Analysis and Improvement of Sourcing Tools" by Manuel Rossetti for the Defense Logistics Agency.

The meeting, open to all industry members, invited guests, and faculty and students from partnering universities was a success. Some comments from attendees:

"Great to see how other members are benefiting from their CELDi Research"
"CELDi is a great experience in the area of supply chain and logistics"
"CELDi gave great opportunity for networking and learning"
"Great Research, great value, and great future employees"
"CELDi gives great opportunity to meet with the next generation of supply chain leaders."

The fall 2016 conference will be held at the University of Missouri, Oct. 25-26.

For more information on CELDi, contact Rossetti, CELDi director, rossetti@uark.edu, 479-575-6756. For more information the upcoming Fall conference, contact Sandy Sehon, Sehon@uark.edu 479-575-2124.

The Center for Logistics and Distribution is an applied research and education consortium consisting of:

• Five major research universities
• More than 15 member organizations from commercial, military and government sectors of the economy

The National Science Foundation (NSF I/UCRC).