Lyric, Supply Chain Engineering Education, and the Job Market
For several months, I’ve heard that the job market is tough for new graduates.
Last week, Mark Werwath, the director of Northwestern’s MEM program, reinforced that the job market is tough. But he added, “All our MEM students going into supply chain are getting jobs!”
Before that, my friend Ganesh Ramakrishna (CEO and Founder of Lyric) and I talked about developing new supply chain engineering training material1. He thinks there is an opportunity to go much deeper and provide detailed supply chain context.
And Ganesh would know.
His company, Lyric, has been quiet for three years but just recently went public on LinkedIn, announcing that they’ve raised $23 million in VC funding. Their website has a great list of clients. (In full disclosure, I was mentioned in the post as one of their early and ongoing supporters.)
Lyric’s product is all about supply chain engineering. It is about building tailored supply chain solutions. These solutions require supply chain engineering: figuring out the algorithms needed (whether it is optimization, machine learning, LLMs, or something else), determining the level of automation, and building connections to bring the algorithms and data together.
All of the above excites me about the supply chain engineering field.
I’m excited that companies are hiring for supply chain roles.
I’m excited to see the success of Lyric and that the market realizes the value of solid supply chain engineering.
I’m excited to do my small part and help bring new training material to the field.
For more thoughts on supply chain engineering see my recent post on that topic inspired by an interview with Amazon on Supply Chain Optimizers.