We hand UNT’s logistics seniors the problems our clients bring us.
NT Logistics writes and judges the senior capstone case competition in the University of North Texas logistics program. In 2019 we committed ten years and $200,000 to running it every spring and fall.
- Commitment
- Ten years, from 2019
- Pledged
- $200,000
- Rounds
- Spring and fall
- Judged by
- NT staff and UNT graduate students
There is no answer key.
Every case is built from situations NT has worked through. Teams get the data and a role, usually the senior logistics specialist at a manufacturer, and they have to put a dollar figure on the network as it runs today, then defend something better to a room of C-level bosses.
Several answers can be right. What wins is the one that cuts landed cost without breaking service to the customer, with the math to back it up.
How a round works
- KickoffNT visits the class and hands out the caseThe data, the role and the question
- InterviewsTeams come to our Frisco officeThey question the people who have worked the real version of the problem
- ReviewEach team submits a recorded presentationPlus a written report with its recommendation
- FinalsPresentations on the UNT campusNT staff and UNT graduate students judge. The top three teams win cash prizes
Some of the cases
A customer adds delivery days. A manufacturer’s biggest customer started taking deliveries more days a week. The plant could make the product, but freight costs climbed. Teams worked ten months of data, including rate per mile, fuel surcharges and volumes, to find the least landed cost to each destination. And there was a catch: the product had seven to ten days from QC release to delivery before its code date ran short.
A food manufacturer outgrows its storage. Product moved into outside warehouses, and the network had to be redesigned from the plant to the warehouses and on to customers. Teams priced the current network and their proposed one.
A CPG plant spills into storage across the country. Teams weighed warehousing, transportation and case metrics on total landed cost and recommended moves for the next six months, the next eighteen, and beyond. Forty-eight students on eleven teams took that one on.
The warehouse question is one clients bring us too. Five warehouses, priced on total landed cost →
In order for our students to differentiate themselves in the employment market, they have to gain applied experiences in logistics. With the dedicated support of Lynn Gravley and NT Logistics, our students gain not only applied experience, but sharpen key soft skills so they can stand tall in the market.Professor Brian Sauser · University of North Texas
Where it started
Lynn Gravley graduated from UNT in 1987. Around 2000, Dr. Ron Hasty, who founded the university’s logistics program in 1997, asked whether NT would take his students as interns. NT has hosted UNT interns ever since, and many of them stayed on full time.
Lynn joined the board of UNT’s Logistics Center in 2013. UNT put him in its business school Hall of Fame in 2025, and in 2026 he was appointed to the UNT System Board of Regents.
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