Today was the second time I volunteered for Junior Achievement - Reverse Job Shadow Day. The first was in April 2011 and both times have been with 8th grade Middle School students. If you would like to get an idea as to the degree of difficulty in keeping the attention of Middle School age kids while explaining how a supply chain works, listen to this podcast on Middle School from This American Life.

It wasn't easy to create a one-hour cirriculum that makes Supply Chain Management the slightest bit interesting to teens, but I'd like to think I sorta pulled it off. The presentation is broken up into 4 quarters:

Q1: Introduction and definitions
Q2: Supply Chain Activity
Q3: Education
Q4: Problem Solving Activity + Final Questions

Q1: We start with a short introduction and by explaining the ingredients that make up a hamburger and the steps it takes to get the materials out of the ground (or out of the cow). Kids' aren't stupid...they grasp it quickly. So we increase the degree of difficulty and explain - with map - the global supply chain for a Dell computer all the way down to extraction of crude oil. This sinks in too and we move to talking about very basic reasons why we must manage supply chains (Hint: Save money, Avoid disruptions).

Q2: The first activity involves five volunteers named as their own companies in different regions of the world. We set up an intentionally flawed supply chain between them with a sizeable bottleneck. They use bolts, nuts, and washers to put together a "product" with each student company "supplying" the other with a WIP part. The finished goods and all the unused inventory in counted and a price given to each explaining working capital. Then we talk about the bottleneck, discuss strategies to increase speed and efficiency, and re-balance the links in the chain with the best strategy and run it again. After the second 60-second run, the remaining inventory is added up to show how much money this supply chain has just saved. The final run is explained as an attempt to "beat their last number of finished parts", but between 15 and 45 seconds, I start tossing spare parts at one side of the table to simulate a regional disruption caused by natural disaster, war, labor unrest, etc. The output ends up as the lowest of the day and leads to a discussion about how the supply chain was disrupted and about what strategies we can do to ensure that a disruption in one part region or link of the chain will not shut down the entire operation. We re-balance the chain one last time and use dual sourcing principles to minimize disruptions. After the last discussion, the volunteers get a round of applause. If the students seem really engaged and attentive after the first round, I have the option of working in a description of push vs pull and JIT as well. If they are easily distracted, we stick to the basics.

Q3: Shifting gears to education, I try to drive home two points. First, whether you know or don't know what you want for a career, the worst thing a student can do is limit their own options. What if you graduate and decide to be a Doctor but can't get into Med School due to bad grades? What if you think you want to be a park ranger and one day develop a passion for the legal profession? The best strategy for education is to earn the best possible grades you can and it is the only way to avoid someone telling you someday that you CAN'T be hired for the thing you have decided is the right path for you. Teenagers always feel like they are being told what they CAN'T do by parents, teachers, law enforcement, street signs, and their peers. The idea that they can put themselves in a position where all options are open and no one can tell them NO really resonates. Will that thought be enough to drive them to do well in school? Probably not, but maybe there are one or two kids sick of hearing NO that will latch onto the concept.

Q4: The second activity involves three bags of chips. In case you didn't know, Middle School students LOVE unexpected snacks. Three more volunteers guess at the prices and sizes of each bag - one family size, one medium size, and one snack size. The prices of each bag are reviewed and the class agrees that the snack size bag is the best value because it's only $0.99...once they have totally convinced each other that this is accurate, we divide the price by the ounces of product in each bag and find out that per ounce, the smallest bag is double the price of the family size. I explain that if we multiply this result by 10,000,000 bags of chips, I would be fired for recommending that my company buy the snack size bags based on it's status as the lowest price per bag. So we've driven home the point that analysis and comparison of similar but not identical products is a vital function of Supply Chain Management and Purchasing. Finally, they get to eat the chips while I take questions. If there is time, we can work on one or two more activities.

Things I learned from this experience...in no particular order:

• The amount of learning that occurs during a hand's on activity is exponentially higher than during a lecture.
  


• During a discussion on careers, kids are not shy about asking how much money you make.
  


• Teenagers are impressed by the symbols of success and by big numbers. When I mention that my company does almost $30 Billion in sales annually and employs close to 200,000 people world wide, they take notice. Whn I mention that my company uses a private jet to shuttle salaried staff between locations and that I use this service regularly, they look at me like I'm Jay-Z. During activity #1, the remaining inventory is priced in the millions per piece. I've learned that they pay more attention when they hear that after the second run they saved $15-$20 Million instead of $0.15 or $15.00.
  


• Again, kids LOVE unexpected snacks!
  


• It must be incredibly difficult to manage a class; I tended to gravitate toward the kids I knew were interested and participating and ignored the kids that were acting up or obviously tuning me out. I can get away with that for one hour, but a teacher has to attempt to get these kids engaged without creating boredom for the kids that are more interested and grasp concepts quicker. I can't imagine the level of multi-tasking needed to create such an environment.
  


• Middle School students don't quite grasp globalization, and are shocked when they hear the wages paid to laborers in China and Thailand...and we don't even get into child labor practices.
  


• Each kid reacts differently to having projectiles tossed in their direction by an adult. Some will just stop what they are doing and look completely confused, some will never look up and assume it's coming from other students, some will threaten to throw them back, still others will become very agitated and stare at you like they are going to attack. Still...every single reaction is utterly hilarious!
  


• Finally, you will suffer the consequences of including "nuts" in an activity with 13-15 year olds. You will make at least one innocent comment about nuts that gets a big laugh from the students. And at least one student will come up with their own joke that's just risky enough to get a laugh without drawing punishment from the teacher. Buyer beware.

I've provided a link to my presentation to hopefully give others ideas on how to explain the importance of SCM to the those who find the concepts tricky. The material should be simple enough to be understood by middle school kids, your boss, your company's executive staff, shareholders, etc...

Junior Achievement is a critical part of creating links between today's professionals and tomorrow's workforce. Our society should be focused on mixing more career professionals into daily classrooms to raise some of the burden on teachers and help kids answer the question: "When will I ever use this...?"