Research firm ranks top U.S. schools for supply chain technology

There's no doubt that technology is playing an ever-growing role in supply chain management. But which educational institutions are doing the best job of teaching their students to use that technology?

Software Advice, a division of the Gartner research and analysis firm that provides advisory services to software buyers, has published a report analyzing the quality of U.S. universities' supply chain technology education at both the undergraduate and graduate level. This ranking is based on the extent to which the schools emphasize the teaching of technology, software, and quantitative tools used by supply chain professionals, as well as the variety and depth of this coursework. The final list of institutions includes 15 undergraduate and 15 graduate programs.

Pennsylvania State University, which has long had an extensive logistics and supply chain management program, ranks first for undergraduate education, while the lesser-known University of Western Michigan ranks second, due in large part to its requirement that undergrad supply chain students learn how to use such tools as enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing resource planning (MRP), and geographic information systems (GIS), among others. University of North Texas, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Tennessee ranked third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

At the graduate level, the top two schools are University of Wisconsin and University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. Next came Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in third through fifth place.

The entire report, including rankings for all of the schools and the reasoning behind them, is available here.