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Important Dates for our Clients for Spring 2026

We are excited to be working with you! Here are some dates to keep in mind for the Spring 2026 Projects:

Important Notes on Non-Disclosure or Data Sharing Agreements (March 13)

If you want an NDA or DSA (we'll use NDA for both), it will be between you and the students as individuals. It will not be between you and Northwestern or the faculty advisors and instructors. The faculty does not need to see the data. We are happy to talk more about this.

If you'd like to have an NDA with the students, please try to have it before Friday, March 13. The students will have an NDA training session the next week. This will give you time to get these signed prior to kick-off.

Note: The NDA is optional. If you don’t want or need an NDA, no reason to put one in place.

Data Preparation (early March).

Try to have this done by early March. The sooner you can pull the data together, the better. A good data set helps you get a much better deliverable. We are happy to talk to you about this.

Kickoff!!! (Wednesday, April 1, 5:00 – 6:50 CT)

The kick-off is on Wednesday, April 1st from 5:00 to 6:50 CT. (Sorry for the late time-- this is a required class for all our juniors and we try to put it in slot to minimize conflicts with all other possible classes they might want take.)

We’d love to see you in person if you can be on campus. From 5:00 – 5:25, you will meet with the faculty instructors. At 5:30, you will meet with your student teams. Use this time to get into the details of your project. Spend as much time as you need.

Site Visit (If possible from Thurs Apr 2nd to Thurs Apr 9th).

The students get a lot of value from a site visit (if possible). If you could schedule this sometime between Thursday, Apr 2nd and Thursday April 9th, it will help accelerate the project.

Student Proposals Due (Apr 10th).

You already have a working draft of the project. But we want the students to own the proposal. We require the students to submit a proposal of what they will do by the end of the 2nd week (Apr 10th). We would like you to carve out time during the kick-off through the next week to help the students finalize their proposal.

Weekly Meetings.

Be sure to stick to a weekly meeting schedule with the students to keep the project on track.

Final Push (Week of May 11th or May 18th).

Schedule a detailed meeting with the student team to go over final deliverables and create a plan to wrap-up. Past projects have seen success in working with the students near the end to figure out how to successfully wrap up.

Scheduling the Final Presentation with you and your Executives (Jun 1-Jun 5).

The time is up to you and the students. We suggest you try June 1-5. These dates are during the last week of classes. If you wait until the next week, Finals Week, you may find it harder to schedule this meeting because of internships and final exam schedules.

Final Presentations and Report for the Class.

Internally, the students will give a short version of the final presentation to the class and turn in a final report. This will be between June 1st and June 11th. Make sure you get a copy of the final reports from the students.

Lurie’s Optimized Autism Referral Process

A practical, systems-focused redesign of the autism referral pipeline—pairing upstream screening, telehealth triage, and regional coordination concepts to help reduce diagnostic wait times.

From Routes to Results: Tracking Strategy Implementation and Savings

Measuring long-term success of network design recommendations.

Patient Transport System Optimization

Lurie Children’s asked the team to analyze and improve its internal patient transport system across a 23-floor hospital—moving patients between inpatient units, imaging suites, operating rooms, and discharge areas.

Working with student teams to solve supply chain problems

James Hardie has worked with student teams to help analyze classic supply chain issues such as optimal stock levels to hold for material transferred between our manufacturing plants while considering mode of transportation and cost.

Automated Statement Reconciliation — Coca-Cola Consolidated

Vendor statement reconciliation is a manual and time-consuming process. Formats varied widely, creating bottlenecks in extracting the right fields, standardizing layouts, and comparing statements to the ERP records. The student team used modern AI techniques to help automate.

GP Vivienda Mortgage Process Optimization

A strategic look at loan processing.

Enhancing Operational Efficiency Through a Digital Overhaul of the Route Allocation Process

North America Central School Bus partnered with a student team from Northwestern’s Client Project Challenge to modernize how routes are allocated to drivers. The project focused on creating a transparent and auditable process that honors driver preferences and contractual constraints while significantly reducing manual effort.

Optimizing Dog Volunteering Shift Organization

How do you run a three‑hour volunteer shift with 14–20 dogs and 5–12 volunteers in a new facility full of doors and blind spots—while keeping dogs from crossing paths? The team paired a clear playbook with a mixed-integer optimization model that outputs a safe and efficient schedule that volunteers can follow.

Data Engineering and Forecasting Book Sales

The project's goal was to develop a forecast of new book sales based on industry sales databases (like BookScan) and Blackstone’s internal data. To support the forecast, the team had to help with the data engineering and building data pipelines to maintain the data.

Warehouse Picking Algorithms and Multiple Objectives

A picking algorithm can drive efficiencies in a large-scale warehouse. However, the algorithm must consider different constraints, objectives, and the impact on other operations.

Using a CPC Team as Consultants

A quote highlighting the value of CPC team.

When to replace IT assets?

A student team worked with the Coca-Cola Consolidated IT team to determine the best time to replace IT assets like laptops, desktops, and iPads.

Supply Chain Optimization: Routing and Inventory

Decisions on how frequently you ship impacts the inventory you need to store.

A Forecasting App for Class Size

Northwestern's Office of the Registrar assigns courses to classrooms. Since available classroom space is always tight, having better forecasts for each course will help.

Northwestern University Logistics Assessment

CPC team completes an assessment of the current and future state of Northwestern's Evanston campus material logistics programming.

A CPC project can be a great way for alums to connect back to NU's IEMS program

An alum from Northwestern's IEMS class of 2015 works again with a CPC team.

A Deeper Understanding of College Graduation Rates Based on High School Data

Cristo Rey St. Martin (CRSM) wanted to look at more than just ACT scores to predict the college graduations of their students. This helps with admissions to college and creating support plans for the students.

Warehouse Capacity Dashboard to Long-term Forecasting

JR286 wanted to understand warehouse capacity. They wanted a daily capacity dashboard as well as a long-term forecast to understand when they might run out of space.

Staff Scheduling and Strategic Planning at a Local Non-Profit

Staff scheduling is important to help BHGH satisfy their mission: “To nurture and guide motivated young people in extreme need to become college-educated, career-ready, community-minded men and women for others.”

Improving service level by optimizing safety stock in a space-constrained environment

USG wanted to evaluate the current safety stock strategy and identify opportunities to improve service levels in a space-constrained environment.

Simulating Turnaround Time to Get Rooms Ready for the Next Patient

An operational challenge at any hospital is to prepare a room for the next patient. The faster this can be done, the better. However, it is not just about cleaning time, system congestion can mean that it may take a long time for the cleaning crew to even get to a room.