A team of four DePaul graduate students placed third at a global supply chain case competition held April 27.  

The competition, which took place at the annual meeting of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), brought together four finalist teams from 20 universities around the world.  

Against global competition, in DePaul's first time entering the competition, DePaul students held their own.  

A real-world case puts classroom skills to the test

Students had several months to prepare their pitches for the competition. (“We started with reading the case a couple hundred times,” quipped team member Shreya Chandrashekhar Misal.)

Their brief: take on the perspective of the Chief Supply Chain Officer for a major hospital system to tackle five real-world challenges: fragmented data systems, Medicaid funding cuts, geopolitical instability, workforce strain due to burnout, and rising costs driven by tariffs.  

The competition required in-depth qualitative thinking, said Manish Tripathy, the students’ advisor and an assistant professor of operations management at DePaul.  

“When the problem is highly qualitative, it becomes very difficult to present,” Tripathy said. “It’s a proposed solution; you don’t know exactly how it will look in the field.”  

Students dove deep into similar hospital systems, becoming experts in a matter of months. They estimated cost savings from their proposed approaches based on real-world examples. They aligned their recommendations with provided company objectives. They also sketched out a 12-month roadmap showing how, precisely, leaders could draw on their recommendations.  

Along the way, students implemented what they’d learned throughout DePaul’s MS in Supply Chain Management program.  

“Our coursework involves regularly reading a lot of case studies,” said Misal. “So we already had practice in how to navigate a case study when it’s presented in front of us.

“Looking at their presentation, I could see direct connections to discussions that we’ve had in class,” echoed Tripathy. “It made me very happy to see that they’re taking what we discuss in class, retaining it, and using it meaningfully in different contexts.”

A field that offers a unique outlook on global business

Students went through several rounds of the competition before taking the stage as global finalists at ISM’s annual conference. There, at the industry’s premier conference, they got the chance to network with supply chain professionals. They took home third place, ranking among teams from top-ranked supply chain programs.

For the team, the competition reinforced how supply chain cuts across all areas of business. Supply chain, in turn, is vulnerable to outside factors, with the ebb and flow of both national and global politics foremost among them.  

“Medicaid funding cuts were one of the hardest things we tried to solve,” said team member Vishwak Manickavasagam. “We don’t have any direct solution for it; it’s not really a supply chain problem. But we had to try to solve it using supply chain solutions.”  

“When we started working on this case, one of the solutions we were prioritizing the most was tariffs, because that was the hottest topic in November,” added Misal. “But now, things have changed; geopolitical risks have come into the picture.”  

For all four students, the experience reinforced their passion for the unique perspective afforded by supply chain analysis.  

“Everyone should know about supply chain: where things are coming from, where they’re produced, and how they get into your hands,” said Manickavasagam. “As a student, it’s so important to have the curiosity to learn. Nobody can say they know everything about procurement. It’s a puzzle we just have to try solving every day.”  

Perhaps most of all, the competition reinforced the power of the relationships forged in the MS in Supply Chain Management program.  

“We were already good friends before this competition,” said team member and Supply Chain Society president Nikitha Gokulapati. “Everyone’s been very supportive and hard-working. And everyone has done their part with enthusiasm.”

Misal, Manickavasagam, and their teammate Sujay Dapurkar echoed Gokulapati’s sentiments.

“The program has given us opportunities to network in so many different ways,” Gokulapati added. “Most of us have turned that into internships or scholarships. Our professors are very supportive — and any time there was a moment we needed help, they were there for us.”  

Tripathy, for his part, hopes that the team's win will just be the beginning.  

“I’m really glad that the students did this,” Tripathy said. “From next year onward, we are going to try to incorporate this into our classes. And this sets such a good precedent. When our students go out into these case competitions, they do extremely well.”