A key principle of Supply Chain Management is the successful distribution of a commodity. To demonstrate this principle, our Business School students were required to decorate a cookie kit, prepare them for retail sale and package the cookies for safe international distribution. After all, nobody wants to buy a package of broken cookies. Over a period of four weeks, cookies were prepped, packaged and carried around by students acting as fictitious couriers who would mildly mistreat the packages by dropping them from waist height in class.
When the cookies arrived at the fictitious retailer’s high-volume distribution centre, each kit was “accidently” dropped from a height of six metres, simulating a conveyor belt in a distribution centre. Business faculty Vickie McInnis and Steve Bishop enlisted the assistance of EllisDon construction employees to evaluate the resilience of each cookie kit by dropping them off the second level of the A-Block building currently under construction at Progress Campus.
Kits were assessed for damage and the student teams were assigned grades based on packaging choice and creativity, as well as damage sustained to the cookies. Team 8, consisting of students Angie Linares Gonzalez and Fernando Zamora Luna (shown), was judged to have the most creative retail and resilient packaging combination.
This unique course assignment illustrates the kind of real-world projects Centennial’s Business School students are asked to collaborate on and complete. “Drop day” ended up being great fun for students, faculty and EllisDon employees alike.
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