Operations and supply chain undergrad program retains No. 3 Gartner ranking, moves up to No. 5 in graduate ranking
The Moore School’s undergraduate operations and supply chain program in the management science department sustains their No. 3 ranking in North America, according to global research firm Gartner. The operations and supply chain graduate program climbs one spot to No. 5 from the last biennial Gartner ranking in 2022. This marks the first Top 5 ranking for the graduate program.
The ranking comes two months after the management science department was awarded the industry-renowned UPS George D. Smith Prize from INFORMS, the largest professional association for the decision and data sciences.
“I am delighted that the management science department was selected as the winner of the very prestigious UPS George D. Smith Prize and now has been honored with the No. 3 spot for undergraduate and No. 5 spot for graduate programs in 2024 Gartner rankings,” said Rohit Verma, Darla Moore School of Business dean. “These rankings are a recognition of years and years of hard work and dedication by the department towards operations, supply chain and analytics education, research and overall industry impact.”
The USC undergraduate program’s ranking persisted at No. 3 from the 2022 biennial list. Gartner ranks the top 25 universities according to their program scope, industry value and program size.
“With the 2024 Gartner rankings and the INFORMS prize, I would like to acknowledge our awesome management science faculty, who are not just outstanding researchers but great teachers, and equally important — they are wonderful practitioners of operations research and management science and analytics. They have applied these skills in our operations and supply chain program and business analytics offerings quite effectively,” said Sanjay Ahire, co-director of the Moore School’s Operations and Supply Chain Center and Carolina Trustees professor of operations and supply chain management.
Ahire is also one of the founding faculty for the Moore School’s operations and supply chain program, which was created in 2007.
“Of course, we are also very proud of our world-class students who are not just smart but also very career-focused and hardworking, and we could not be here without such competent and ambitious students!” Ahire said.
The updated Gartner rankings add to the successful academic year, which has seen the Moore School’s undergraduate and MBA operations and supply chain programs secure top 25 rankings from U.S. News & World Report. The undergraduate program was ranked No. 18 while the MBA program has been ranked No. 16 among all supply chain/logistics programs. A new category of Best Production-Operations MBA Programs also earned the Moore School a No. 22 spot.
To earn their accolades, each semester, the management science faculty lead senior student groups that develop capstone consulting projects with Operations and Supply Chain Center partner organizations, such as Alpek Polyester, Boeing, Coca-Cola Bottling, Continental Tire, McLeod Health, Michelin, Nephron Pharmaceuticals, Schaeffler, Siemens, Sonoco, Stier and Trane.
The student teams explore how the partners can optimize their supply chain networks, remove waste and procedural inefficiencies and implement new process strategies, ultimately presenting their findings to company executives. Since the projects began in 2008, the student groups have yielded more than $330 million in collective recurring cost savings for partners across 360 projects.
Moore School operations and supply chain students also compete to earn an industry-validated Sonoco-USC Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification, which gives students advanced problem-solving skills and the statistical tools needed to effectively lead process improvement projects. More than 1,300 undergraduate and more than 300 graduate students from the university have earned this unique certification through the program.
These strengths have enabled the operations and supply chain program to place well-trained talent with leading employers. Examples of those organizations include 3M, Accenture, Alpek Polyester, Amazon, Bank of America, Boeing, BMW, Boston Consulting Group, Coca-Cola, Collins Aerospace, Continental Tire, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe’s, Manhattan Associates, Michelin, Mercedes-Benz, McKinsey & Company, Nephron, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Sonoco, SpaceX, Target and Tesla.