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The importance of data-driven planning and decision-making is increasingly recognized as a key lever for improving outcomes for both businesses and the planet. At the same time, businesses today face supply chain challenges of growing number and complexity.
In order to prepare current and future supply chain and business leaders to tackle those challenges, the MIT Global SCALE Network and the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) hosted their annual Supply Chain Challenge in the first few weeks of 2023. The challenge is a three-week competition, which presents learners with real company data and an underlying supply chain problem for participants to solve.
The MIT Global SCALE Network is a global alliance of leading research and education centers dedicated to supply chain and logistics excellence through innovation. One hundred forty students from the SCALE Centers in Spain, Luxembourg, Malaysia, China, and more convened in Cambridge to network and learn from supply chain experts and participate in the Supply Chain Challenge.
Six company partners, including o9 Solutions, supported the competition by providing real company data sets containing a supply chain problem that needed to be resolved. o9 Solutions provided access to our Market Intelligence knowledge offering comprising data feeds curated for relevance to supply chain planning. By working collaboratively on real supply chain challenges, each team could develop and showcase superior analytical skills and mastery of analytical tools (Python, Optimization, PowerBI, etc.) by solving real-world problems. A dedicated MIT postdoctoral researcher mentored each team.
A jury of renowned business and supply chain leaders and researchers evaluated the teams’ solutions and presentations. Seven teams out of the 28 were selected to present during the final. The solutions presented were assessed for supply chain innovation, applicability, and business acumen.
o9 Solutions is pleased to have supported the competition by providing the awards fund for the 15 students in the winning teams! The first prize was awarded to the team of Julia Fernandez del Valle, Gianmarco Merino, Gustavo Rodrigues, Yumna Tajwar, and Khaled Eid!
Vikram Murthi, VP of Industry Strategy at o9, Valentina Anzola, MIT alumna and Sustainable Solutions Lead at o9, and Lauren Clover, North America Recruitment Lead, attended the outstanding presentations. Vikram Murthi handed the awards to the winning teams on behalf of o9.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in and supported the annual MIT SCALE Network Supply Chain Challenge, and special thanks to the MIT Global SCALE Network and the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) for organizing the event and hosting us!
About the authors
o9
The Digital Brain Platform
o9 Solutions is a leading Enterprise Knowledge and AI-powered platform helping companies build Agile, Adaptive & Autonomous Planning & Execution Models for transforming enterprise decision-making in environments of rising volatility and uncertainty. Whether it is improving forecast accuracy, matching demand and supply and driving collaboration across the multi-tier supply chain to improve resilience at optimal costs and inventory, or optimizing new product and commercial initiatives to drive revenue growth and margins, decision-making processes from long-range to tactical to execution horizon can be made faster and smarter and connected on o9’s Digital Brain Platform.
o9 brings together game-changing technology innovations — such as innovative enterprise knowledge graph modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for forecasting, demand/supply balancing, scenario planning, real time learning, collaboration, generative and agentic AI, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery, and innovative management methods — as well as organization, process and change management best practices to transform decision-making speed and intelligence.
