Where does the money go? Practical experience on product level

Beschreibung

Purpose
In higher education, there is a constant need to bring practical experience into the classroom in order to motivate students and boost their actual skills and competences needed later on to analyse problems in real world contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
In our paper, we outline a way to do this by problem-based learning (PBL) in form of a work assignment that demands the deconstruction of costs from point of origin to final retail price for a product of their choice. Certainly, this includes not only simple retrieval of information about cost data and profit margins but makes it necessary for the students to reasoning in detail about actual manufacturing and distribution processes needed to end in a final product.
Findings
The work assignment results in a mapping of material, processing, transport and logistics costs at each level of the supply chain, which in turn allows drawing conclusions about economic, environmental and social impacts coming along with manufacturing and distribution processes on a single product level.
Social implications
This paper is still work-in-progress, but we can already see foresee two implications as follows: (a) student submissions and ex post interviews should show that the awareness of environmental as well as social responsibility is fostered to a high extent by such a work assignment, and at the same time, (b) student submissions may be a valuable source to explore sustainability issues in supply chains on a single product level.
Original/value
So far, evidence about (a) usefulness of PBL in the context of supply chain management, as well as (b) sustainability issues on a single product level is rarely available. We want to close this research gap, but our work is still work-in-progress as we are quite unsure, which of the two directions outlined before may the more promising one and worth further inquiry.

Zeitraum	12 Juni 2019 → 14 Juni 2019
Ereignistitel	NOFOMA 2019 - The 31st NOFOMA Conference “Supply Chain Designs and Sustainable Development of Societies”
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International