If David Closs hadn’t needed some extra
cash in college, he might never have
ended up where he is today: as chair of the
department of supply chain management
at Michigan State University (MSU), as
well as the John H. McConnell Chair
in Business Administration and founding director of MSU’s Midland Research
Institute for Value Chain Creation.
While a math and computer science
major at MSU, Closs was looking for a part-time job.
His father, at that time the director of physical distribution for Dow Corning, “told me to see this guy Don
Bowersox, who was looking for computer help,” Closs
recalls. Bowersox—a professor at MSU and a pioneer in
the field of supply chain management—hired him. The
rest, as they say, is history. Closs worked with Bowersox
for some 40 years, as a quantitative logistician developing simulation and network modeling tools, getting his
Ph.D. under his mentor’s tutelage, publishing numerous
books and academic papers, and working his way up
through the academic ranks to become department chair
in 2007.
Today, he leads a department that’s been ranked number one by U.S. News & World Report for five consecutive years and recently topped Forbes magazine’s list of
the top 100 supply chain programs worldwide. But Closs
was also chosen as a Rainmaker for his leadership style—
what his nominators described as “devotion to the
department and Michigan State above his own career.”
Closs, the testimonial said, “inspires others with his
personal standards, his ethics, and his determination.”
Q How has MSU’s department of supply chain man- agement changed during your tenure, and why?
A Around 1977 or so, Don and I were in the market- ing and logistics department, and there were senior
people in operations management and purchasing who
appeared to be coming together. So Don got everyone
into cross-departmental groups, and they created the
materials and logistics management major. That was the
first time anybody had put together what would later
become “supply chain management.”
In 1997, we created a department called
“marketing and supply chain manage-
ment.” That worked very well, but in
2007, the marketing people wanted to
split off, so we became the department of
supply chain management. Many of us
would rather have kept it the same way,
because today almost all aspects of firms
are becoming increasingly integrated,
I think we’ve influenced the practice of supply chain
management quite a lot. We’re somewhat uniquely
positioned at MSU because we have a truly integrated
supply chain program. Many institutions separate man-
ufacturing or operations from logistics and sourcing;
their faculty look at it as how to optimize a plant, while
we look at it as how to optimize the supply chain. I view
all of [the functional areas] as ideally integrated together,
which is where I think more firms are moving. … We
want to get organizations to think cross-functionally and
take an integrated end-to-end supply chain perspective.
Then you can really see what the opportunities are to
improve performance.
Q What goals do you have for the department in the future?
A We’re going through a shift toward a focus on value chain integration. I view the value chain as a combination of marketing, supply chain management, packaging, security, and other functions—all of the things we
think of when we have to design a new product and then
safely get it all the way to the consumer through integrated cross-functional activities. I’m convinced this is
the right way for us to go in the future. People who have
been trained to think this way will create a competitive
advantage for their companies.
I think it’s a great opportunity for us. Just as Wharton
is strong in finance and Kellogg is good in marketing,
MSU will be strong in value chain integration.
David Closs
Q What advice would you give someone looking to enter the field of supply chain management?
A Supply chain management can be a key differenti- ating factor in organizations. Having the expertise
and capability to drive improvements to the company
cost structure, to improve customer service, to work in a
global world, and to design supply chains that drive opti-
mization is exciting and extremely rewarding. Supply
chain management touches all aspects of the business.
If you like working with people, working to redesign the
future supply chain in a global environment, and using
data and processes to make improvements, then this is a
great field to be in.
