The automotive industry has spent decades perfecting the physical supply chain. The data underneath it still doesn't line up, and the people walking in the door right now spot it in their first month.
In this episode of the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast, Jan and Tom Roberts sit down with Wayne State University supply chain students Mia Bustamante and Daniel Kuzniar to hear what the working world looks like from the entry point. Both landed on live problems immediately. Mia's worked on automotive, consulting, finance, and healthcare projects, focusing on cost optimization, launch readiness, and data analysis. Daniel spent his first year of a tier one co-op on tariffs and supply chain mapping.
Data is the first thing they name. In school, the set is clean, and the answer's already known. At work, the first job is finding where the data lives: one system here, another team's version there, an Excel tracker somebody built ten years ago and never explained.
Daniel saw the same problem from the tariff side. Seven good forms from seven good teams, each right for its own purpose, none able to line up against the others. His ask of the industry is cross-functional data standardization, which is another way of saying you can't ask AI to make sense of silos you haven't broken.
Leadership is where both land next, and they use the same word for it: context. Tell a young employee what decision the work supports and who'll use it, and the work comes back better. Give them something to own, and they stay. When his manager was out for a week, Daniel ran daily meetings for a group of co-ops and built the agenda himself. He'd never done anything like it, and the culture made it safe to try.
This conversation challenges leaders to stop treating early-career talent as a pipeline problem for later. The people asking why a report exists are asking the right question, and the companies that bring them into the room early, with context and real ownership, will move faster than those still saying, "go get it done."
Themes Discussed in This Episode
- Why clean classroom data sets don't prepare students for automotive
- Data standardization as a cross-functional problem, not an IT project
- Context as a leadership requirement
- Giving early-career talent real ownership
- What a year in a co-op teaches about culture and psychological safety
- AI in the classroom and on the job: use it, then verify it
- Bringing younger employees into the room where decisions get made
- Why industry voices belong inside academia
This podcast is powered by QAD RedZone.
Featured Guest
Name: Mia Bustamante
Title: Supply Chain Management and Finance Student, Wayne State University
About: Mia is a student at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business, pursuing a double major in Global Supply Chain Management and Finance. Through internships, consulting projects, and case competitions, she has gained experience across purchasing, supply chain, finance, and automotive operations. She is passionate about technology, leadership, collaboration, and the evolving future of the supply chain industry.
Connect: LinkedIn
Name: Daniel Kuzniar
Title: Honors Global Supply Chain Management Student, Wayne State University
About: Daniel is the president of Wayne State University’s GSCMA (Global Supply Chain Management Association) & a procurement co-op focusing on tariffs for a tier one automotive supplier. Daniel works to coordinate and standardize all types of tariff information to be simple and understandable from the top level, and as accurate as going through each entry & invoice form.
Connect: LinkedIn
About Your Hosts
Jan Griffiths
Jan is the host and producer of the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast and The Automotive Leaders Podcast. A former automotive manufacturing and supply chain executive, Jan is recognized as a Champion for Culture Change in the automotive industry. She brings direct, grounded conversations to leaders navigating execution, disruption, and transformation across the global automotive ecosystem.
Tom Roberts (Co-host)
Tom is Co-host of the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast and Vice President of Strategic Industry Development at QAD. He works closely with automotive and industrial manufacturers to close the gap between insight and execution, helping leaders move from visibility to systems of action that drive real operational outcomes.
Episode Highlights
[02:13] Straight Into the Deep End: Mia's worked across four industries before finishing her degree, and Daniel's first year at a tier one supplier put him on tariffs and supply chain mapping, two of the least settled areas in the business.
[06:34] There's No Clean Data: Mia's biggest surprise wasn't the analysis. It was discovering that finding the data comes first, and that nobody agrees on where it lives.
[08:23] Standardizing While the Rules Change: Daniel built forms and processes for tariff data while the tariffs themselves kept moving, and suppliers didn't always fill them in the same way.
[11:59] Context Beats Instructions: Mia explains what separates the leaders she learned from: they say what decision the work supports and who's going to use it.
[14:49] Trusted for a Week: With his manager out, Daniel ran daily meetings for a group of co-ops, handed them ownership of the calls, and learned what's possible when a culture makes it safe to try.
[17:55] Verify Before You Trust It: Daniel limits AI while he's still building the skill; Mia uses it daily and checks it against a professor or a textbook. Tom makes the case that a degree without AI fluency is worth less than it should be.
[22:32] Seven Forms That Don't Talk: Daniel's answer on what the industry should fix is cross-functional data standardization, and Tom traces the mess back to growth by acquisition and system convergence nobody ever finished.
[24:32] Bring Them Into the Room: Mia asks leaders for the one thing a training video can't deliver: a seat in the meeting where experienced people think a problem through out loud.
Top Quotes
[07:11] Mia Bustamante: "School teaches you how to analyze that data, but work really teaches you how to find the data first."
[14:25] Tom Roberts: "(Empowerment) gives you tools and context and removes obstacles for you and lets you do the work."
[15:31] Daniel Kuzniar: "The most important thing is to empower co-ops, interns, allow them to have ownership over certain things so that they understand that responsibility going into the workforce."
If this episode resonated, share it with a fellow automotive leader and subscribe to the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast, where we're closing the gap between insight and action across the global automotive supply chain.
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