A unique study abroad experience

Harbert Business and Ginn Engineering partnership enhances students’ education, career prospects

Two supply chain management students teamed up with Auburn engineering students this summer on a study abroad trip and consulting project in northern Spain. Junior Erik Venjohn and senior Owen Hammonds were part of a five-person team that immersed themselves in Spanish culture while also helping an automotive parts maker enhance its warehouse and production processes.

Supply chain students have traveled to Europe in the past for one week course-related experiences that included case competitions and industry projects in Trento, Italy, and Toulouse, France, but this latest trip marks the first long-term international program with a consulting project focus.

“These experiences are great for our students,” said David Paradice, Harbert eminent scholar and acting department chair of supply chain management. “Most supply chains today are global, and those experiences give students a global perspective.”

The summer trip was beneficial for another reason, said Branden Farmer with the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE), which sponsored the trip through the Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

Although there’s overlap in the career paths of supply chain and ISE graduates, the nature of engineering and business curricula means those students learn the language of their discipline only.

“When they get out into the workforce, they’re going to interact with people who don’t speak their language anymore,” Farmer said. “As the students worked on the company project, we watched them talk about theories and ideas that they learned in their [engineering and business] classes—they were having conversations that they wouldn’t ordinarily have.”

Courtney Arnold, who co-led the trip with Farmer and is his academic counterpart in supply chain management, concurred.

“There’s so much crossover between both disciplines and they’re often going to be working in the same manufacturing facilities, so why not have them work together earlier,” she said. “This experience gives them holistic problem-solving skills and it’s preparing them for the real world. They’re also gaining a deeper understanding of how their education can make an impact far beyond the classroom.”

Venjohn appreciated the interdisciplinary interactions and liked how each team member tossed out ideas so they could learn from one another.

 “It was cool to see how engineering students think differently,” he said, recalling the problem-solving meetings the team had. “They would bring a lot to the table on what they learned.”

“Being able to learn from and work with people with other skill sets than you was a great experience,” Hammonds said.

The student team spent most days in the company’s warehouse under the guidance of Roberto Galan, director of operations at Estampaciones Mayo. Their goal, Galan said, was to apply the principles of DMAIC, a data-driven problem-solving approach, to enhance his company’s warehouse inventory operations.

One of the team’s recommendations that the company implemented was to replace hand-written labels affixed to boxes of newly made parts with digitized labels, providing a more accurate count of parts packed in the boxes.

As Hammonds noted, DMAIC by its nature involves finding small, incremental steps for improvement, so the team started by developing the most affordable solution first.

“We started with some really basic ideas that would cost less than a thousand dollars to implement but would make [their] processes more efficient,” Hammonds said.

According to Galan, the company adopted one of their solutions.

“Currently we're in the process of printing a label with the numbers of parts from our IT system and adding it to our containers,” Galan said.

A second, more advanced and costly recommendation the students came up with was to install RFID scanning gates in the warehouse, which would allow for real-time tracking of inventory, said Hammonds.

Galan noted that the company is evaluating RFID technology for a pilot installation in its plant.

Venjohn and Hammonds earned internship credit—a requirement to graduate in supply chain—and they highly recommend the program to their fellow students.

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“The hands-on experience with warehouse management integration and continuous improvement strategies was incredibly valuable. It strengthened my technical problem-solving skills in supply chain and gave me practical tools I can use in my future career in logistics and operations.”

Supply chain management student Erik Venjohn

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In the end, both Harbert College and Ginn Engineering aim to produce graduates who are both knowledgeable and ready to lead and innovate in their chose fields.

“When they go to career fairs after having this experience, the students are more marketable and they’ll get better job offers,” Arnold said.

In all, 44 Auburn students participated in the ISE study abroad experience and contributed to five projects for Pamplona-based companies spanning the automotive, medical device, food, public safety and AI fields.

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About the ISE study abroad experience

The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with financial support from the Walter Center for Technology Management, sponsor the Pamplona, Spain, study abroad program. ISE faculty member Jorge Valenzuela, the Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Professor, and Branden Farmer founded this unique study abroad in 2021. ISE students completing the program earn project course credit toward their Business Engineering Technology minor.

Learn more about study abroad opportunities through the Harbert College of Business.