Can I become an Industrial engineer or work in a quantitative career if I major in Supply Chain?

I am currently studying for an undergraduate business degree at my school. I have a choice between 6 concentrations for my business degree. The concentrations are Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, General Management, Operations and Supply Chain Management and Accounting. Also I really love math. I want to have a career that involves quantitative analysis or number crunching. The more math I can do, the more interested I would be in whatever field that I pursue. In addition to majoring in Business, I am also minoring in Statistics to sharpen my quantitative skills. I took an Operations Management class and I found it somewhat interesting because part of the class involved solving Linear Programming problems. However, I’m afraid that if I studied Supply Chain Management, I would be stuck transporting materials or working in a warehouse or factory. I don’t want to be physically involved in the transportation or production of goods or materials. Is supply chain management still suitable for me?

Some of you may ask why am I not studying engineering if I love math. It is too late for me to change my major because I been in college for 4 years. Even if I majored in Engineering, I would probably not like it because engineering classes involve physical science and I don’t find physical science interesting. Economics seems like a perfect major for me. I like the analytical and quantitative aspect of Economics, but the problem is that a bachelors degree in Economics does not have many career opportunities. I also heard that many people who major in Economics work for the government if they are able to find any employment opportunities, but government jobs don’t interest me because I prefer to work in the private sector. So I chose to study Business because I figured that if I love math then maybe I can find some kind of fit in the business world, since math is obviously a very important part of business.

Well nobody has answered so I’ll take a stab at it. Why pick supply chain over a finance concentration if you want to be in a quantitative career?

Not sure many of us understand “supply chain”…

My gut tells me it may be better to stay in classic business concentrations.

I assume there are some aspects of supply chain that lend themselves to strong quantitative analysis. So you could ask the supply chain advisor which additional classes someone with strong math, stat, or CS interests could take. The more technical students in supply chain are not going to be working in the warehouse helping to upload the trucks or supervising the uploading.

Sounds like Economics is more your major. I really don’t understand who you getting advice from but its not exactly correct. With Economics you can really do anything. At most business schools worth anything its usually the premiere business major. You can tailor your classes to be in finance, accounting, business, supply chain… pretty much anything you want to do in business you can do in the right econ program. The major also always ranks up there with engineering majors with yearly salary. Most people have no clue what Econ actually is other than the basic 101 level classes.

With supply chain management you probably wont deal with math as much as you want. I am working as an inventory controller for a fortune 50. Its mostly planning and project management. When people usually hear “supply chain jobs” the think of the hourly reach truck drivers, receiving dock/shipping dock labors, or pallet strip work. That’s the entry level hourly positions which no one with a degree goes into. A Supply Chain degree from what I’ve seen will get you into QA, Planning, Coordinating, Procurement/sourcing, operations management (assistant start out), Supply chain analyst,

People always say SCM majors have to compete with engineering majors but both groups seem to go for completely different jobs. SCM is inventory control, supplier relations, management, planning. The business side.

For what you want… I would look into Economics and throw in Statistics classes/minor/major.

Does your school have anything like Business Analytics or Data Science? I think it would be a good fit for your interests and there is huge demand and earning potential.