The spotlight is on Thomas Deakins, University of Tennessee Knoxville, United States.

The University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) is the #1*public university in Tennessee, with 14 degree-granting colleges and schools delivering over 900 programs of study. The university is home to 38,728 students and 1,900 faculty. The 920-acre campus in Knoxville, a vibrant city of 190,000 in eastern Tennessee, has 257 buildings, including Neyland Stadium, the sixth-largest college football venue in the nation. The UTK website states that the university wields a $1.7 billion annual impact on the Tennessee economy.

UTK’s business school, the Haslam College of Business, has over 10,000 students in eight departments, among which is the department of Supply Chain Management (SCM) with over 1,600 students. UTK’s supply chain program is ranked by Gartner as #1 in the United States at graduate level and #2 at undergraduate level.

The department maintains close ties with over 80 companies in the supply chain industry that provide guest lecturers, summer internships and career paths.

In 2024, the SCM department added a special topics class in Transportation Management to its syllabus. The class was initiated by Thomas Deakins, lecturer, with 30 years of experience in supply chain and technology companies. Deakins steered UTK to Oracle Academy, which granted full access at no charge to the Oracle Transportation Management Cloud (OTM) platform for teaching the topic. This is the first use of OTM Cloud through Oracle Academy for a semester-long university course.

Deakins is no stranger to OTM Cloud. He worked for Global Logistics Technologies (G-Log), the company that Oracle purchased in 2005 to bolster its SCM business with a world-class transportation management system (TMS). Oracle Transportation Management is today a leading TMS used by companies worldwide.

Deakins is a recognized leader in building strategic supply chain partner ecosystems, TMS solutions, real-time supply chain visibility applications, and digital supply chain strategies. In addition, he is the Managing Director of UTK’s Global Supply Chain Institute, a hub for thought leadership and talent development, linking a global network of supply chain professionals, corporate partners, faculty, students and academics.

His expertise led him to put together the OTM Cloud-based class for students looking to learn transportation management skills.

Oracle Academy: Can you tell us about the new addition to the UTK supply chain program?

Thomas Deakins: Gladly. For several decades now companies have been adopting TMS solutions for handling transportation activity throughout their supply chains. Oracle Transportation Management enables companies to manage the domestic and international flow of outbound finished goods, inbound supplies, returns, modes of transport — while making sure to optimize costs, service levels, asset utilization, and a whole lot more. Since the 1950s UTK has been at the forefront of transportation, logistics and now supply chain education. Our program teaches SCM as an integrated discipline — focusing on plan, source, make, and deliver. By offering a special topics class in transportation management in all its complexities, we now cover the whole spectrum more comprehensively than ever before.

Oracle Academy: Can you tell us more about this special topics class and why you selected OTM Cloud?

Thomas Deakins: The class is called Principles of Transportation Management and Transportation Management Systems. It begins with an overview of factors that influence transport demand, costs, market structures, carrier pricing, carrier operating and service characteristics, and their influence on supply chain costs and overall supply chain performance.

That overview serves students as a precursor to the need for organizations to have a TMS, in our case, Oracle Transportation Management. I then highlight OTM Cloud’s global position in industry by showing its upper top-right position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, explaining what the magic quadrant is, how Gartner ranks TMS solutions, and why its analysis and advice has impact on industry decision makers.

Then we get hands-on with OTM Cloud itself. Naturally I pushed for the use of OTM Cloud because I was instrumental in building the product 25 years back, have implemented it in many companies, and believe it to be the best TMS on the market. At the same time, to give students another example of how a TMS functions and supports different businesses across the supply chain, thanks to our corporate friends at Axle Logistics, I introduce them to McLeod Systems, a TMS primarily used for transportation brokerages, which are at the heart of the transportation execution process.

Oracle Academy: What projects do you assign?

Thomas Deakins: We start by exposing students to the key features of OTM Cloud and then work on a semester-long project that consists of implementing OTM Cloud in a fictitious manufacturing company that wants to ship products utilizing multiple modes and carriers to all the Buc-ee’s stores in the United States. In this scenario, the students learn about acting as a consultant, using role play to conduct discovery sessions with the Chief Supply Chain Officer of the manufacturing company and others at the C-level, and how to use their findings to devise an OTM Cloud implementation strategy.

Students took OTM Cloud plain out of the box and turned it into a finished product that the fictitious company could use to enter their orders, plan their orders, execute their orders, report, audit and approve freight invoices, and demonstrate cost savings via reporting capabilities in OTM Cloud. It was remarkable — they implemented OTM Cloud faster than I thought and really embraced their roles as consultants.

Oracle Academy: Intriguing. Did you construct the class single-handedly?

Thomas Deakins: Far from it; I had the backing of many players in the supply chain business, some providing technology, others sharing their experience. As guest speakers, we had consultants (some UTK alum), from leading OTM Cloud systems integrators and consultants such as KSAP, Accelalpha and Redwood Logistics. And on the technology side, we have been assisted by firms such as Trimble and SMC3. Trimble Maps provided us with a way to visualize OTM Cloud data and calculate the distance between the origins and destinations. Trimble also equipped us with PC Miler — software for commercial truck routing and mileage, extremely useful as an OTM Cloud plug-in. SMC3, experts in less than truckload (LTL) technology, provided a license for their RateWare and CzarLile products, which simplify LTL rating, the process of calculating the price of freight based on the weight, density, and other factors of the LTL shipment.

And so, we try to give our future SCM practitioners a close-up of the many tools used in efficient transportation management. It’s vital, because we graduate 400 students a year.

Oracle Academy: Sounds like a deep dive into the nitty gritty.

Thomas Deakins: That’s right. And at the end of the semester, students made presentations and we invited companies to listen and give feedback. All passed the final test successfully and got certification badges for LinkedIn, resumés, and so on. It’s been a great experience. I will teach the class again in the fall of 2025. In the spring of 2026, I will deliver it at the master’s level, introducing master’s students to more advanced capabilities within OTM Cloud and using a global case study versus the domestic US case study.

Oracle Academy: Excellent. What career paths will your class follow?

Thomas Deakins: The students will have a broad choice of employers. UTK has 80 corporate partners involved in the Global Supply Chain Institute, many of them Fortune 500 companies. On top of that, another 130 or so companies recruit twice a year at career fairs on our campus. Furthermore, in the SCM department, students are required to complete a summer internship before they graduate, which often leads to full-time employment. I already have had students reach out to let me know that their summer internship will incorporate the use of a TMS, which excites them, as they now understand how a TMS works.

Oracle Academy: Very positive. Apparently UTK is the first university to make use of OTM Cloud end-to-end as a course. How did you make it happen?

Thomas Deakins: It was a very smooth process. My long-time friend, Sam Levin, VP at KSAP, and I came up with the idea, as we both wanted to give back and teach students how to use a TMS. I then took the idea to our faculty committee where they signed off and I ultimately received the green light from Department Head of SCM at UTK. With departmental approval, for the special topics transportation management class, I had to make a choice of TMS. Given my background and experience, I opted for OTM Cloud. I knew that Oracle Academy provided certain Oracle software licenses free of charge to educational institutions.

The next step was to get approval from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. That was easy too, as the CIO was leading the university through a switch from SAP to Oracle. Everything lined up perfectly.

Oracle Academy: Excellent. It must be pleasant to be teaching a platform that you helped to build.

Thomas Deakins: That’s right, this has all truly come full circle for me coming back to my alma mater as a faculty member and bringing OTM Cloud into the classroom to teach the next generation of supply chain practitioners. I’m proud to be teaching here; it’s a highlight of my career. I love interacting with our supply chain students and helping them shape their careers. To think that in 2000 I helped build one of the first G-Log demos and now I am able to train students on OTM Cloud, see them go into the industry as SCM practitioners or as consultants that implement that very product, now enhanced by Oracle — it’s a wonderful feeling.

Oracle Academy: Lastly, what interests do you have outside of the university?

Thomas Deakins: Golf is my favorite sport. I have played at St. Andrews Old Course in Scotland (two rounds), all the Pebble Beach courses, and still have the elusive bucket list course that I probably will never get to play — Augusta National.

Apart from that, I love to travel with my family and friends. I have visited six of the seven continents for business activities and 40 countries for business and personal travel. My family is my mainstay. My wife, Kimberly and I have been married for 27 years. We have four children, two of which have graduated from college and two more are currently at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, one of them majoring in supply chain. Life outside of academia is rich too.

*https://news.utk.edu/2024/10/10/forbes-names-ut-top-public-university-in-tennessee/

Thank you, Thomas Deakins, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.