Ivy hosts the annual Voorhees Supply Chain Conference

May 9, 2025

Guest speaker at the Voorhees Supply Chain Conference — Michael Watson, an associate professor at Northwestern University, speaks to attendees at the Voorhees Supply Chain Conference.

The Department of Supply Chain Management welcomed 107 guests to the 32^nd annual Voorhees Supply Chain Conference, held April 24 at the Gateway Hotel and Conference Center in Ames, Iowa. The conference brought together supply chain researchers and professionals from some of the nation’s leading transportation, manufacturing, supermarket, and retail companies.

Three keynote speakers addressed this year’s conference theme, “Enhancing Supply Chain Management Through Artificial Intelligence.”

Michael Watson, an associate professor at Northwestern University, delivered the opening keynote, “What Supply Chain Leaders Need to Know About AI.” Watson co-founded an AI company focused on supply chain that sold to LLamasoft, now part of Coupa.

Chad Nelson (‘07 economics), associate director of intake, damage, and returns reduction at Best Buy, described how Best Buy uses AI to mitigate retail returns and make product decisions.

The final speaker, Rajen Raval, director of global supply chain strategy and solutions at Microsoft, talked about how generative AI can accelerate research for industry usage.

For the first time, the conference included a startup showcase, with presentations from two entrepreneurs working in the areas of AI, technology, and logistics:

Drake Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Flete, an automated platform for managing complex fleet operations.
Lucas Schorer, founder and CEO of Kestrel Insights, a leading provider of polygon geofencing solutions.

After lunch, five Ivy College of Business faculty members presented a series of research updates. Topics included:

Supply chain disruptions and inventory dynamics.
Recycling and reusing valuable materials from consumer electronics.
Understanding driver behavior in the gig economy.
Recycling wind turbine blades.
Using Internet of Things (IoT) data to optimize tire selection for transportation fleets.

The Voorhees Supply Chain Conference was established by alumni and friends of Iowa State University to honor the career of the late Professor Emeritus R. Dale Voorhees and to provide industry leaders with a premier conference in their field. Voorhees was an Iowa State teacher and researcher for 20 years.

Additional support for the conference was provided by the Ivy Supply Chain Forum and the university’s Center for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS).