You could contact damco/maersk/agility/dhl and talk to them ask them if they need any solicited research done whether it is exploratory or whether there is a problem they need identified or resolved through research. You tell them you will provide them the results as long as it falls within your available resources to conduct this research they in turn should help you with information and possibly fund your research too. This would reflect nicely on your cv, your defense would be childs play and there is a high probability you could get into that organization thanks to your research. Any company with a supply chain process should suffice, especially big names approach anyone and everyone!
The right method is you decide a topic and tell a company how it will help them and they help you out.
Or choose topic do research and then sell that to company.
Or the method I have told you above, I once did some of that for Cupola Pakistan. We just asked them what help they needed and told them we were planning along the lines of a brand comparison two meetings later we had quite some purpose to the whole thing.