Logistics students place third in first-ever Innovation Challenge
A team of 糖心Vlog logistics students placed third out of 14 schools and received $1,000 in the first-ever FreightTech Innovation Challenge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in March.
The FreightTech Innovation Challenge, organized by logistics industry leaders FreightWaves and CO.LAB and sponsored by Reliance Partners and U.S. Xpress, is a 24-hour transportation and logistics use case competition. Students spent two days working to solve challenges facing the transportation and logistics industries with the chance to win cash prizes and find potential employers.
Marc Scott, Ph.D., assistant professor of logistics, said the feedback the team received from the judges set this 24-hour case challenge apart from others our logistics students have participated in previously.
鈥淭his was a unique opportunity for our students to get great feedback from industry leaders in solving time-sensitive problems that real supply and logistics companies face on a daily basis,鈥� said Scott.
The students were tasked with finding transportation and logistics solutions based on a fictitious customer looking to expand its operations throughout the Southeast. With FreightWaves鈥� SONAR technology system, a first-of-its-kind freight market data and analytics platform, the student teams proposed ideas to help find the most efficient and cost-effective transportation and logistics solutions for the customer.
Throughout the case competition, students were able to ask SONAR market experts and coaches from various corporate sponsors to help them solve the case, according to Jeff Mason, managing director of alliances of FreightWaves.
鈥淚 am impressed with the level of talent among the college students competing in this challenge,鈥� stated Mason. 鈥淚t was hard to pick a winner because they are all going to be successful. I would hire every one of them.鈥�