When Shoppa’s Material Handling began to experience fast growth a few years ago, selling more forklifts and machine equipment and new logistics services to industrial customers, owner Jimmy Shoppa ’80 turned to TCU’s Center for Supply Chain Innovation for help. Student interns are now ensuring the company has the proper inventory and customer management tools to fulfill orders in a timely manner.

In an ongoing process, interns established methods to eliminate duplicate parts entries in the company’s database so inventory levels were accurate, which reduced the number of parts collecting dust and freed up cash. They also standardized parts names and incorporated prices into the database, saving time and allowing easier inventory management.

Little did Shoppa know how crucial these efforts would become amid the intense pressure on supply chains caused by Covid-19.

Shoppa “has this desire to really, really make sure his company is in the right position to meet challenges,” said Dave Malenfant, the supply chain center’s director of outreach & partnerships, who has coordinated TCU students to work or intern at the company and has advised its owner on everything from big data to hiring. “He recognized the data is there, and he needs to get his hands around the data.”

Such collaboration reaps multiple benefits. “We can learn a lot from him, and at the same time he can learn a lot from us,” said Malenfant, former vice president of global supply chain at Alcon Laboratories in Fort Worth.

“Working with TCU’s supply chain school, we’ve realized how important the ability to manage data has become.”
Jimmy Shoppa

As part of a capstone project for a master’s degree in supply chain management, Evan Black ’15 (MS ’19) analyzed Shoppa’s inventory data system. He discovered that not only were some components entered into the system multiple times, some customer information, such as addresses, was out of date, which made tracking inventory difficult.

“The data wasn’t complete, and it wasn’t uniform,” said Black, who now is an importer for his family’s business in Baltimore but also consults with Shoppa’s.

Shoppa also has enlisted help outside of TCU, including from Preston Jones, an MBA student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta who was part of the four-person team that won TCU’s fourth annual Graduate Supply Chain Case Competition in February. In one day, 18 teams from universities around the country came up with innovative ideas to address a supply chain issue for fast-food company Chick-fil-A, which wanted to expand its West Coast distribution to meet growing customer demand.

That’s where Shoppa met Jones. The CEO was so impressed that he offered the 29-year-old a six-week paid internship over the summer in the company’s new automated warehousing unit.

“It was an incredible growth experience for me,” Jones said. “Shoppa’s is one of the most entrepreneurial-minded places I’ve worked at. Within that environment, I had a lot of freedom to build new ideas and designs and test them.”

Jones helped Shoppa’s develop a marketing strategy, including a blueprint for redoing the website and customer case studies, for its new warehouse logistics services unit. He also helped define staff responsibilities and map the flow of operations.

“Working with TCU’s supply chain school, we’ve realized how important the ability to manage data has become,” said Shoppa, who sits on the center’s advisory board. The interns “have been exactly what we needed.”