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From the nation's leading supply chain University program.

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We welcome you to the Penn State Supply Chain podcast brought to you by the Center for Supply Chain Research.

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Here are your hosts, Steve Tracy and Irv Grossman.

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Well, good day, everyone. This is Steve Tracy,

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the executive director of the Center for Supply chain Research.

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And I'm joined with my co-host IV Grossman,

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the uh CEO of Chain Analytics,

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part of the N TT E Data Organization.

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And today we're recording episode 21 of the Penn State Supply Chain Co podcast.

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Our topic today is meet the CS er core research director.

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We know that research is vital to identifying organizational challenges and discovering long-term innovation in supply chain models.

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Here at the Center for Supply chain Research. We are committed to advancing the field of supply chain through our relevant research and our ever evolving expertise and to share a little bit more about how we do that,

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we are pleased to be joined today by professors Brent Moritz and Professor Hui Zhao,

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the core research directors for CS Cr Let's go ahead and get started with uh Brent.

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So, Brent uh tell us a little bit about your research and um your role here in the center as a research director.

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Sure, I'm a faculty member here in the supply chain management department.

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Before that, I actually spent a decade in operations and supply chain management in corporate America,

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working for uh some fortune 500 firms went back to do my phd.

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And now I've been here at Penn State for 13 years.

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It's a great opportunity and I, I very much enjoy my job uh here as a professor and as co-director of the A center.

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So my research is in supply chain decision making and it looks to understand how managers make decisions uh focusing on inventory,

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supplier, selection, forecasting those kinds of tasks.

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It looks a lot at how managers process information uh might be subject to heuristics and biases.

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Uh For example, how they respond to previous periods,

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demand and how they might chase demand or how they deal with risk and uncertainty in supply chain tasks.

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One of the great things about being here at Penn State is we do have some excellent colleagues that are doing just top notch research.

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University of Texas at Dallas publishes a list of the top publications uh and who's doing the most of them.

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Uh And from 2017 through now,

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in our four leading operations in supply chain journals,

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Penn State is number seven in the world that puts us just behind MIT Harvard and UCL A just ahead of NYU in Siad in France,

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ahead of Cornell and ahead of the University of Michigan.

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So we have some of the best researchers in operations and supply chain.

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That's one of the reasons that uh it is exciting to be here as well and being part of that faculty so way.

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Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell our audience a little bit about your research background briefly and what your domain expertise is?

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And then can you talk a little bit about why you became interested in being the co one of the core research directors for the center?

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Sure, my research develops analytics tools that can be used to align incentives into uh induced collaborations and also uh improve supply chain efficiency.

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I've worked on problems for spare parts and consumer boats for manufacturing earlier in my career.

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But more recently, much, much of my work has been focused on pharmaceutical products and other health care products.

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So trying to increase the efficiency in the pharmaceutical supply chains.

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And I'm also interested in public policy because most of the pharmaceutical supply chain,

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you know, is it is heavily regulated.

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I'm also very much into innovations in supply chains like online platforms,

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applications of new technologies and so on and so forth.

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So in terms of my interest into the research co-director position,

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I just thought that for academia to do really good research,

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like you know, forward looking innovation focused research,

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we really would like to do research not only would increase,

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you know, advance the frontier of knowledge but also be meaningful for the practice for the real world problems.

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I think the industry and the academia partnership is critical.

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Hence that I'm really interested like that,

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that's what got me interested in this position.

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And I'd like to, you know, do my best to advance um the center in terms of this partnership.

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That's a great set of objectives. So,

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and partnerships are extremely important actually to not only make uh your research relevant to industry,

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but uh making us as, as sponsors more successful in our supply chains,

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you you want to talk for a few minutes about maybe where you've seen some of those successes and where,

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where, where you've seen the success between the partnerships work well between the centers and their sponsors.

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Sure. So I think academia,

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we have resources like faculty and students,

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you know, we the expertise from the faculty and students would really help the the industry to,

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you know, as I mentioned forward looking and what the industry might be focused on day in day out in their challenges,

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the academia could work on these longer term impact of innovations or or other challenges that they're facing.

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So some of my research has really been really benefited from that,

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from that mutual partner, like from the partnership and the mutual benefit to each other.

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For example, I have worked on problems of drug shortages and I've presented my work sometimes not yet published but the work in progress in industry forums to the advisory board of companies and where I seek their feedback.

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At the same time, they also really benefit from what we have put into research.

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And they, they were encouraged, they were inspired and they also asked great questions.

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At the same time, we would, you know, take their feedback and put that into our research and then present back to them where that would benefit them.

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I have also done research projects uh where I have come to the industry,

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the practitioners to say, have you thought about this?

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And a lot of times the uh the the answer is yes,

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but we really don't have the bandwidth to do that.

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And bingo though, as academicians that we,

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we would like to work on these problems that are meaningful at the same time that we could contribute our side from either you know,

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the state of art methodology or again,

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that uh our thoughts, our, our,

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our thought processes and, and uh and all these and one of the um important roles that the center plays and that both you and we play in the center is our student research portfolio.

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Can you talk a little bit about how that integrates into our teaching mission?

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What role do both of you play in that process and how it benefits both the student and industry in general.

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We have a variety of student research projects where we engage with industry.

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So sometimes what we'll do is we'll assign either uh an individual student or a team of students to a research question that is of interest to the firms.

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Sometimes that lasts over a semester, sometimes that's over two semesters.

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Uh, firms get an outside perspective and some new ideas potentially of something that's of interest to them.

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Clearly, they also get access to some of the talent.

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And uh many times, uh those introductions have led to students landing jobs uh with,

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with those firms. So the students get a chance to engage with industry on something that's really important.

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Uh And that really rounds out their experience uh here at,

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at Penn State in, in a lot of ways,

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those take varying forms and part of my job as a co-director is to help match what the companies are looking for with those research projects with the students we have available and to try and have something that fits for everybody,

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our, our corporate partners as well as the students that we have,

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we have in front of us. So what walking,

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walking through that uh situation specifically Brent the input comes from the sponsors.

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They, they have a need, they, they, they,

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they were, they ask for it with the,

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the, the center and then you help provide a clearing house of the individuals that may be able to support that project if,

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if at all. Yeah. So we've got a process that's laid out on our website and with our,

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with our corporate partners in brief,

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there'll be a call for proposals that will happen over the summer.

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Our corporate partners will get those back.

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I believe it's mid July with those and say this is what we're looking for.

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Here's kind of the scope of the project.

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Uh Here's some of the expected deliverables and uh each of our corporate sponsors can request,

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I believe it's up to two of those per year.

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And then hui and I take a look at those in late summer and then we match those up with the students who are interested and try and come up with AAA way.

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That makes sense. Now, we have a variety of outlets for those.

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So some of the student projects end up being prior honors theses and that get dedicated to a single student doing an honors thesis.

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Some of those are uh project teams with Sigma Utah,

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our supply chain honor society uh where we'll have a team of,

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let's say 2 to 5 students on a particular project.

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Sometimes those get allocated to our MB A students in the past with some of our experiential learning projects that go,

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that go with those and sometimes those go to an individual student.

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Uh Depending on what the companies are,

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are looking for in the scope of the project.

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It is a bit of a matching game and I won't say it,

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it's necessarily easy but, but it is interesting to see all of these interesting questions posed by the companies and trying to match them with the right students or student groups.

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Well, I, I have a specific question for you and I know you've done this for a couple of years when you're working with graduate student,

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either a master's student or perhaps a phd candidate.

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What role does these research projects play in the teaching of these students and advancing their education while they're with us,

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I try to help the student to understand not only the problem from the research perspective,

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but also from, you know, a practice perspective so that they could do a,

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a practice informed research.

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I normally involve them with my interactions with the companies,

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companies either provide data or they provide a problem context and then we would meet regularly with the companies,

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you know, to, to get to know this problem context better,

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which will inform our research,

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you know, to abstract it into a more general liable problem which will even more benefit our industry collaborator and then we will regularly meet with them and uh discuss about our thoughts and they would provide their inputs and feedback back to our thoughts.

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At the same time, we will form this problem research problem together.

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And after we obtain our research results,

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we will again present to them.

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And then the phd student is,

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is involved in this, this whole process and from which they have learned not only the research part,

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also interactions with practitioners at the same time to better inform their own research.

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And a question, I guess, really, for both of you and I'm sure you both have probably similar and maybe different perspectives.

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Our audience is probably not all that familiar with the process,

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uh the inputs and the outputs for professional research,

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the research that you actually do and are kind of rewarded for.

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So publishing in a journal, can you and I know what you both do is a little bit different.

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Can you talk about the process,

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the methodologies uh what your goals are and how that advances both of your careers as professional researchers for our research that uh our faculty are driven for?

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They are, as I mentioned, they would like them and I think the Penn State faculty share this concept.

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Uh we would like them to be grounded from a reality like a real problem and then we would abstract them uh into some research question.

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That's only, that's, that's more, that's Generali that is,

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you know, uh that with innovation at what's new and then uh also with rigor.

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So those are the, the three most important components of our research.

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And then, uh so we would usually come in from a real context and then advance them into such a topic.

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And then we would use whatever methodologies that we would think that's the best uh to these problems.

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For example, Brent uses experimental uh pro well,

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definitely brand to talk about that part.

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And then uh I use analytics in terms of either analytical models or empirical research.

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And we would find the, the best uh methodology.

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And then we, for these methodologies, we need to have assumption set,

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we need to have input, input parameters set.

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And this is where we would heavily involved with our uh sponsors or collaborators.

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And then we would uh the the academic part of the research is it's pretty independent on our side that we would,

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we would uh we would conduct this research,

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but again, with interactions with them to make sure that what we have assumed what we have conducted uh applies to like the real situation as well.

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And then we do would like to publish our results because as I mentioned,

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one of the, one of the components of our research is Generali we'd like to benefit a lot of other people as well.

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So we will have a very rigorous peer review process uh which not only benefits the research per se but also sort of advances us into a way that would be uh the,

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the leading piece in the literature and uh benefiting even the academic scope as well.

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Maybe you can add to that and, and talk just a little bit about the I I know it's somewhat of a arduous and lengthy process for you and we and your colleagues to get published.

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Can you, can you add a little bit more context to what we just said.

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Sure. Well, the main metric for research from an academic perspective is to do things that is creating new knowledge that is general liable to many different contexts.

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So the mechanism for doing that is a peer reviewed high quality research publication,

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which hopefully can be used by people going forward.

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It's something that is different than a company trying to solve their problem and move on from it.

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We want to solve the problem them once and have it applicable to hundreds or thousands of similar contexts.

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And so to do that, the the bar for quality is very,

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very high. But that's kind of what uh research professors get excited about is being able to generate new knowledge and share that with our industry partners as well as as well as other academics.

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The best way to do that or one of the best ways to do that is find things that hit on several different things.

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For example, my colleague uh Sarah Banel here has done a great project with Dow Agrosciences on some of their forecasting,

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which was a huge challenge for for Dow and how they integrate experts into forecasting future products and allocating things in the a agribusiness space.

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It saved Dow millions of dollars uh going forward.

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But the interesting thing for Sara is a and others in that is many other companies have some of the same challenges.

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So they're able to generalize some things uh about that circumstance,

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uh get it published into some very high quality academic publications.

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Uh And now that becomes kind of the source going forward for some of these kinds of tricky problems where you've got to engage experts on both the supply and the demand kinds of things.

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Uh And that's advancing the field of knowledge,

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which is really what research professors get paid to do.

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In many cases, It sounds to me like Brent,

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you got to answer the question twice, once,

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the specific client requests and once and how do you generalize it to the industry?

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Is that, is that the best way of putting it? That that is a good way of putting it.

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You wanna be sure that you're answering both of those,

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both of those questions. Yeah, because for,

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for the, the sponsor themselves,

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that's be viable that we actually provide all this wonderful data.

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II, I go back to think about all the wealth of data and information that we have available that um honestly,

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to those that are grinding it out in the supply chain.

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I have an old boss that used to say if the same people work on today that work on tomorrow,

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tomorrow will never come. And so sometimes we have such a wealth of data.

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We just want a partner that somewhat makes some sense out of it.

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And, and frankly, you know,

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always the first thing is can we turn it over to somebody,

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you know, who in academia to support us.

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And they said, well, the response time is so poor because they're working on those things that are,

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you know, required for them to get published. So,

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you know, I imagine research has changed so much.

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I'm, I'm sorry, I'm gonna get on the soapbox and I'm gonna return it to a question.

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But it, but research has changed so much based on the wealth of data and our need to respond quickly,

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has research changed for you and how you are able to work better with us as sponsors.

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Well, one of the things that has changed is the fact that we can more easily collaborate in ways that we didn't,

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we weren't able to do in the past. So for example,

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the fact that people are able to use Zoom and have virtual meetings and share data and share screens and say this is the problem I'm having.

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And here's some of the data I've got. And this is what this means,

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the technology has changed in the,

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in the time that I have that I,

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that I've been here very, very fast.

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Uh And to be able to say this is what's going on and just to have that sort of be the normal way of communication.

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As I think back to when I started my career,

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if you got people on a, you know,

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phone call or sitting around a conference room table,

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that was like the latest and greatest technology and now we're on zoom and sharing information all the time.

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Uh But it's also gotten more complicated as companies have more data and they say,

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hey, I don't, I don't know what to do with this.

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I have a friend down uh at uh University of Pennsylvania who,

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one of the things he looks at is what he calls digital exhaust,

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which is all of the data that firms generate uh in their supply chains and operations and some of their customer data that they don't know what to do with.

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And, and he looks at some of those things saying,

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well, what can we do with this to help inform our supply chains of the future?

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Those are great questions and we don't have the right answers to that.

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But just even having that term says,

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OK, uh there's, there's potentially more info,

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more data here than we know what to do with. How do we turn that data into some useful insight,

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some useful information. So part of the things that I feel that uh the world has changed is,

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you know, there there's so much disruptions coming right from geopolitical,

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environmental reasons, regulatory challenges,

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technology advances and even pandemic,

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put the whole world into a halt.

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II I. Well, this is a great challenge at,

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at the same time, I I feel like also the industry has realized that things are changing so much and uh they would aim for solutions maybe right at the same time.

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And so I think this is also providing a lot of opportunities as well for the academia.

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Well, we here at the center are very happy to have two very respectable professional researchers as part of our leadership team.

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And so uh just to close it out, who are we talking to today?

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We were talking to Professor Wei Zhao who is the Charles and Lily and Binder faculty fellow.

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Her research applies analytics to health care systems and her main interest is in the pharmaceutical supply chain public policy and innovative designs to health care systems.

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She's won a bunch of awards including being the finalist for the prestigious Piera Award by informs.

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She's also the has been the runner up for the Ralph Gomori best Industry Studies paper uh by the Industry Studies Association.

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Professor Brent Morris is an associate professor of supply chain management.

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Been with Penn State for a while since he joined us from the Operations and Management Science Department at the Carlton School of Management,

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University of Minnesota. He's also got a BS in mechanical engineering and Brent also has a bit of a professional career.

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He's helped positions in operations and supply chain management at board Warner uh Eaton and partner Hanifin,

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uh including some international experience in both Mexico,

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England and Germany. So both of our colleagues here uh bring a wealth of experience and knowledge,

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not just to the department but to the centers of core research directors.

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They're in their early parts of that part of their career.

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So we look forward to many more years of working with them on behalf of the Center for Supply Chain Research.

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Uh I Grossman, uh and myself, we want to thank them for joining us today for our podcast and we look forward to seeing them in a future one,

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maybe to talk a little bit more detail about their actual research and what they've been working on.

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Thanks for listening to the Penn State Supply Chain podcast brought to you by the Center for supply chain Research at Penn State.

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research needs and professional development offerings.

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