For Trevor Thomas, earning his online Master of Science in Operations Management degree was his ticket to operations management.

“Since graduating from the program, I was able to secure a position with Amazon as an operations manager, where over the past year I've launched a new fulfillment center in San Marcos, Texas, and had the chance to build an amazing team of young managers and associates,” Thomas said.

“Probably 50 percent of the concepts learned in the ops management program are relevant and utilized each and every day I'm at work,” Thomas said.

He has executed a continuous improvement project to improve safety, quality and productivity within the Amazon Robotics storage platform deployed at his work location.

On the horizon is the potential to move once again, this time back to his hometown of Orlando, Florida, with a new Amazon opportunity related to his current efforts to provide Value Added Services for the products Amazon sells on their site.

“The one thing I've learned about the most in the past year is robotics and how they are employed in the warehousing/distribution/fulfillment environment,” Thomas said. He thinks the program should look into including content on robotics and the potential impact, both positive and negative, to the human workforce and the bottom line of the business.