Chaifetz Students Create Supply Chain Solution for Wellness Drink Company
Maggie Rotermund
Senior Media Relations Specialist
maggie.rotermund@slu.edu
314-977-8018
Reserved for members of the media.
A Partnership with Alum Angela Zeng (Med '01) Provides Real-World Experience for Students
ST. LOUIS - A good supply chain system is like water or air - necessary to function but something one doesn’t think about when it is working well.
“That is the role supply chain plays in our lives, that without it being interrupted, it just helps us in ways we do not feel or we take as a given,” said Tiancheng Zhao, Ph.D., assistant professor of operations and IT management in Saint Louis University’s Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business. “It connects us all together.”
Students in Zhao’s class in supply chain management in Spring 2026 had the opportunity to compete to take a system that contained interruptions and find ways to make it run smoothly. The winning proposal was chosen at the end of the semester and the three-member team spent the summer perfecting their app, which they presented to the leadership of Karviva on Sept. 18.
St. Louis-based wellness beverage company Karviva, known for its line of plant-based wellness drinks inspired by traditional Asian herbal nutrition, was founded by Angela Zeng, Ph.D. (Med '01). Zeng connected with Jintong Tang, Ph.D., the Mary Louise Murray Endowed Professor of Management, who leads both the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship and the Emerson Leadership Institute, to form a new collaboration between SLU and a local business, connecting student learning with real entrepreneurial challenges.
For Zhao, it allowed him to take a course that was once based in abstract of coordinating people, data and resources and ground it in practical learning with a company seeking to improve its internal processes.
Zeng shared Karviva company data with graduate student teams for strategic analysis, allowing them to build a system based on the real growth decisions facing the expanding company.
“With this experience with Karviva, the students learn that the real world is not what is simply those several lines of formulas in the textbook,” he said. “It is much more than that.”
From Zhao’s class, the team of Kuan-Wei Chao, Wei-Chen Lin and Kuan-Ju Chen, all students working towards a master’s degree in supply chain management, was chosen to move forward with their design. They spent the summer pulling together an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that allows Karviva to track orders, production and inventory.
“This system is very user friendly,” Lin said. “It takes human error out of the input and with the click of a button, you can see the orders you have, your inventory and where in the process your orders are.”
Following the presentation, the ERP system was handed off to the Karviva team to evaluate and begin to make suggested improvements based on its real-world functionality.
Chen added that the system they designed for Karviva standardizes the company’s data, so it should be something that Karviva can employ across its sales and production teams.
Once it is beyond beta testing, the team envisions an app that will also let those outside the company track their orders.
“Our hope is to take this further by giving the suppliers direct access to their own order or shipment status, improving the transparency across the supply chain,” Chao said.
About the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business
Founded in 1910, the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business at Saint Louis University has shaped the future of industry for more than a century. As one of the oldest business schools west of the Mississippi, the Chaifetz School has built a reputation as a leader in business education committed to innovation, inclusion and impact and recognized with eight undergraduate and graduate programs nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
About Saint Louis University
Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic research institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers more than 13,300 students a rigorous, transformative education that challenges and prepares them to make the world a better place. As a nationally recognized leader in research and innovation, SLU is an R1 research university, advancing groundbreaking, life-changing discoveries that promote the greater good.