testimonials

The Challenge: Connecting the Dots Across the Supply Chain

The students entering the capstone are not new to supply chain management.

A typical class includes around 30 working professionals, many with approximately ten years of industry experience. They often already have significant expertise within a particular functional area and are pursuing their master's degree to deepen their knowledge and prepare for broader, more senior roles.

Throughout the program, students build knowledge across a wide range of supply chain disciplines, with deep dives into areas such as planning, procurement, manufacturing, service operations, logistics, technology and global supply chain management.

But that creates another challenge at the end of the program.

Knowing each area individually is not the same as understanding how decisions across those areas interact.

For experienced professionals moving toward broader supply chain responsibilities, optimizing one function is not enough. They need to understand what happens upstream and downstream of their own area, recognize cross-functional trade-offs, and see how individual decisions contribute to the performance of the business.

For Tom, this is precisely the purpose of the capstone: “It's when we really want to be sure that they are effectively connecting the dots and understanding cause and effect.”

Ted describes the same challenge from a leadership perspective. As professionals progress in their careers, deep expertise in one area must be complemented by an understanding of the functions around it.

The question for the capstone therefore becomes: how do you turn everything students have learned across the curriculum into integrated decision-making they can practice?

The Solution: A Living Supply Chain Experience

The Fresh Connection puts students in the position of senior supply chain leaders responsible for running a company.

Across eight rounds, providing an additional two rounds over the standard six round solution to masters concepts, teams make interconnected decisions while managing customers, suppliers, inventory, service levels, costs and overall financial performance. Instead of discussing integration conceptually, students have to make it happen.

Ted describes why that distinction matters: “You can talk about it all you want in a conceptual setting, but to have to practice it [...] really brings those lessons home.”

For Tom, this makes The Fresh Connection different from a traditional case: “We use The Fresh Connection kind of as a living case study.”

In a conventional case study, students can analyze a business problem, discuss their recommendations, and move on. In The Fresh Connection, their decisions stay with them.

A poor decision in one round affects what happens next. Teams have to understand the consequences, reconsider their approach, and attempt to recover. Success in one area can create pressure somewhere else. Decisions cannot be evaluated in isolation.

That continuing cause and effect turns the simulation into an evolving business environment rather than a one-time exercise.

Learning through decisions including the wrong ones

Ted and Tom deliberately structure the capstone to give students room to experiment.

The first three simulation rounds do not count toward the students' final grade. Teams can test assumptions, make mistakes, see what happens, and apply those lessons as they progress.

Ted has observed that teams willing to experiment during these early rounds can turn those experiences into better decisions later.

It creates a learning opportunity that is difficult to replicate in the workplace: students can make consequential decisions and learn from failure without putting an actual company at risk.

“What it enables them also to do is to experiment and fail without big consequences.”

He also points out that this freedom has limits in the real world: “You can't do that in a real company, right? I think your boss would be pretty upset if you say, well, I tried to do this, and it didn't work and so we lost millions of dollars.”

And sometimes, unsuccessful decisions create some of the strongest learning moments. By seeing why an approach failed, students experience the relationships between decisions rather than simply being told they exist.

Moving students beyond their own functional roles

The simulation also gives experienced professionals something they may not encounter in their day-to-day work: responsibility outside their own area of expertise.

A professional who has spent years developing expertise in one function might take responsibility for sales, purchasing, operations or another area within the simulated company.

Tom and Ted actively encourage this.

For Tom, stepping into an unfamiliar role gives students greater appreciation for why other functions make the decisions they make, and why alignment across the organization matters.

“By virtue of just being in that seat [...] they have a greater appreciation [...] of the need to reach trade-offs, to have a common understanding of what we're trying to accomplish in the end-to-end supply chain.”

This perspective becomes increasingly important as students move from functional expertise toward roles that require them to manage across the supply chain.

Connecting supply chain decisions to financial performance

That broader perspective is reinforced by how performance is measured.

Approximately 40% of the students' final grade is tied to the ROI their team generates after the eight rounds.

Success is therefore not defined by achieving the highest possible service level, minimizing inventory or driving down one particular cost.

Students have to understand how those decisions interact and what they ultimately mean for financial performance.

Ted sees that as closely aligned with one of the principles they want students to carry into their careers: “Supply chain is a strategic element of the firm that should be used to generate ROI.”

For professionals preparing for more senior roles, this shifts the conversation from How well is my function performing? to How are our supply chain decisions creating value for the business?

Real-world Complexity, Supported in the Classroom

For Ted and Tom, the complexity of The Fresh Connection is not something to simplify. It is what allows students to experience the interconnected decisions, competing priorities and trade-offs that make supply chain management challenging in the real world.

As Tom explains: “Business and life are complex. And if it was simple, it wouldn't be worthwhile for us to engage.”

The challenge is delivering that level of realism without making it burdensome to teach. This is where the wider learning ecosystem around The Fresh Connection becomes important. Instructor support, practice simulations, the Materials Library and AI-supported resources help faculty prepare efficiently, follow what is happening across the simulation and turn each round into relevant teaching moments.

For Ted, this support is a fundamental part of the experience: “As much as I like the simulation itself, the support is essential to me to love using the simulation.”

Tom sees the combination of both as a key differentiator: “Something that really helps us set Inchainge apart is a great game, yes, but also the support that goes with it.”

The Impact: From Functional Experts to End-to-End Decisionmakers

For Ted and Tom, the impact of the capstone lies in how closely the experience reflects the realities students encounter professionally.

Because these students are already experienced professionals, the goal is to help them develop the broader perspective required for their next stage of responsibility. Through The Fresh Connection, they have to coordinate across functions, make decisions under pressure, manage competing priorities, and understand the financial consequences of their choices.

For students in the online program, the experience also requires them to collaborate remotely, sometimes across countries and time zones, reflecting another reality of working in today's globally distributed supply chains.

“Universally, the students come out of it feeling like they've been through a very rigorous simulation that equates to real life.”

In particular, he sees students developing a stronger understanding of integrated decision-making and the trade-offs between cost and service.

But the impact goes beyond understanding how different supply chain decisions interact. Ted and Tom want students to be prepared for roles where they can no longer look at the business solely through the lens of their own function.

As students move toward broader supply chain responsibilities, they need to understand the decisions being made upstream and downstream, recognize cross-functional trade-offs and connect supply chain performance to financial contribution. The simulation gives them an environment in which to practice that broader perspective before applying it in their own organizations.

“We are confident that [...] we're providing real learning opportunities that they can take back and implement in their organizations right away.”

Ultimately, the capstone helps students make the shift the program is designed to support from knowing individual areas of supply chain management to understanding how those areas come together to drive end-to-end business performance.

One supply chain education, three different applications across five different courses

Ted and Tom’s capstone is part of a broader adoption of The Fresh Connection within supply chain education at the Haslam College of Business. Across the supply chain management department, four educators are using The Fresh Connection in three different courses, with different learning solutions supporting distinct educational objectives.

In SCM 580: Integrated Supply Chain Management Capstone, Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby use The Fresh Connection: End-to-End Supply Chain Management to bring together learning from across the MS Online curriculum. Students integrate knowledge across functions, manage cross-functional trade-offs, and experience how their decisions combine to influence overall business performance.

In SCM 505 Manufacturing/Services Operations and Procurement, Lance Saunders uses The Fresh Connection: Supply Chain Segmentation for teaching first-year Master's students, creating a third application focused on another specific supply chain challenge.

“TFC is the most realistic simulation I have found for requiring students to make decisions without full information and to become comfortable being uncomfortable — two skills supply chain professionals need in today’s environment.”
— Lance Saunders, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management, Haslam College of Business

In a different course, an educator uses The Fresh Connection: Market Expansion, applying the simulation to a different learning context where Logistic Network Design is one of the core challenges for supply chain.

Rather than repeating the same simulation experience across courses, each educator applies The Fresh Connection differently according to the capabilities and learning outcomes they want students to develop.

As Tom explains for The Fresh Connection End-to-End Supply Chain Management in SCM 580: “Regardless of whether it's us trying to introduce end-to-end supply chain or reinforce end-to-end supply chain, it serves a vital purpose.”

Together, the three applications demonstrate how The Fresh Connection can take on different roles across a supply chain curriculum, from integrating end-to-end decision-making for end-to-end supply chain to exploring market expansion and supply chain segmentation.

Interested in End-to-End Supply Chain Management?

Explore the End-to-End Supply Chain Management learning solution, powered by The Fresh Connection, and see how students can practice cross-functional decision-making, manage supply chain trade-offs, and connect operational choices to overall business performance.

About the Educators

Together, Ted and Tom also co-host the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast.