During the fall semester, supply chain management and information systems students learned more than the basics of fleet and maintenance operations — they actually ran them.
Through a hands-on partnership between the Ivy College of Business and Des Moines-based company Proaction, students in the Supply Chain Management/Information Systems 5400 class worked inside the same type of system used by real organizations to manage complex, multi‑location fleets.
Proaction is a modular fleet operations platform that connects people, assets, and data into a single system of action.
Led by Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management Henrik Sternberg, the course used a dedicated Proaction environment designed to mirror real-world operations. Instead of relying on case studies or screenshots, students logged in to the platform to manage their work, track inventory, analyze data, and explore how AI tools support their daily decision-making. The experience provided students with a practical understanding of how enterprise technology works in practice, while demonstrating how collaboration with industry partners, such as Proaction, helps connect classroom learning to the realities of modern business.
“It is vital for students to learn how state-of-the-art (Enterprise Resource Planning) ERP systems interact with novel, AI-powered solutions from startups,” Sternberg said. “Our collaboration with Proaction gives students hands-on experience in how maintenance processes can be streamlined in practice, and how innovative tools can be integrated with legacy enterprise systems.”
“What students quickly realize is that real firms do not operate with a single, clean system landscape. This assignment exposes them to the messy reality of best-of-breed architectures, where integration, data ownership, and process alignment matter as much as the technology itself.”
— Henrik Stenberg, associate professor of supply chain management
Instead of just reading about enterprise systems, students logged into Proaction and:
- Created and managed work units in their assigned lot.
- Added inventory with receipts and saw how it flowed through operations.
- Exported data to understand how day-to-day activity shows up in reports and decision-making.
- Applied Proaction AI functionality to understand how emerging tools can streamline daily operational workflows and surface actionable insights.
The exercise was designed to integrate strategy, operations, and systems into a unified experience. Students saw how choices about locations, assets, and processes are reflected in the software, and how that software, in turn, shapes what operators can see and do. Just as importantly, they experienced the reality that modern operations rarely live in a single, perfectly clean system.
“What students quickly realize is that real firms do not operate with a single, clean system landscape,” Sternberg said. “This assignment exposes them to the messy reality of best-of-breed architectures, where integration, data ownership, and process alignment matter as much as the technology itself.”
That contrast was also clear from the student’s perspective.
Jayce Abens, a concurrent MBA/ mechanical engineering student from Webster City, Iowa, was in the course and described how Proaction fit into the broader ERP curriculum.
“Our ERP coursework focused on Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle NetSuite, both powerful platforms that are notoriously complex,” Abens said. “Using Proaction for an assignment was a breath of fresh air by comparison. The platform felt sleek, intuitive, and user-friendly, especially for our fleet management use case. That made it easy to focus on problem-solving rather than learning the software itself.”
From classroom to day-one impact
Sternberg has built a reputation for creating some of the strongest ERP and supply chain classes in the country. With a PhD in supply chain management from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, prior experience as an associate professor at Lund University in Sweden, and years as a consultant at Cambridge Technology Partners and later his own consulting firm, he designs courses that mirror the way real consulting and operations teams work.
His students are used to working in full-featured enterprise systems, configuring processes from scratch, and presenting their work to industry practitioners. The Proaction collaboration extends this model into the world of fleet and asset operations, helping business students become job-ready upon graduation.
For students, the benefits are clear:
- They work inside a real system used by actual fleets, not a toy interface.
- They see how concepts like planning, inventory control, and visibility play out in live workflows.
- They leave the course with concrete experience that maps directly to roles in operations, consulting, and analytics.
For Proaction, the partnership is already showing results. The company hired team members who came through Sternberg’s classes and program, and they bring the same blend of systems fluency and supply chain thinking that his courses are known for.
This collaboration is a model for how universities and industry can work together.
