Current research

Our current research is concerned with technologically sophisticated methods of solving business problems related to the delivery of products and services from the manufacturer or provider to the end-customer.

Exploiting flexibility to drive optimisation in tactical and strategic planning: Param Iyer

Temperature-controlled supply chains, commonly known as 'cold chains', are integral to global trade. Increased urbanisation and prosperity have led to explosive growth in demand for perishable food products. Yet, over a third of food production is lost to inefficient or ineffective supply chains. Optimising cold chains provides an economic advantage and a social benefit by reducing the wastage of essential goods.

This research explores the role of flexibility, usually a tool for risk management, within the cold chain in influencing the optimisation of storage and transport operations. The flexibility to store a product at different temperatures, change the temperature of a room or container and modify the space allocated to each temperature within a given area can contribute towards improved asset utilisation and reduced operating cost. This flexibility is the foundation of tactical optimisation to enhance the efficient utilisation of existing resources and strategic optimisation to recommend suitable investments in developing flexibility.

Customer-operated sorting for reducing contamination in used product take-back: Lahiru Gunasekara

The vision of a circular economy inspires businesses and environmentalists alike. As part of their circular economy strategy, many businesses around the world trial take-back programmes. Take-back success depends on acquiring used products, sorting them and deciding what proportions should be reused, remanufactured or recycled for optimal benefit. Contamination is inevitable for any take-back scheme with public access. A high level of contamination may make recycling expensive and cause take-back schemes to fail entirely.

This research aims to inform businesses how to make the most effective decisions to minimise the total cost of their used product take-back system via involving the customer in the sorting process. A mathematical modelling approach will be utilised, using industry data on return quantities, error rates and consumer return behaviours.

Reducing food loss and waste – strategic technology investment: Na Luo

Preservation technology has been recognised as an efficient tool to extend the life cycle of food products, and therefore reduce food loss and waste (FLW). However, the universal applicability of technology to reduce FLW is questioned and challenged in practice. Normally the leading companies could effectively control FLW by applying technology. Whereas, counter-intuitively, when small and medium enterprises (SMEs) replicate or learn from the leading companies in technology application, the performance in reducing FLW is sometimes unsatisfactory. According to our investigation, there are multiple factors influencing the above result.

  1. Learning opportunities
    Compared to leading companies, SMEs have fewer opportunities to approach actionable and effective technologies due to a shortage of funds and experts and limited market power. This impacts the success of replication from other companies with suitable adjustments.

  2. Implementation failure
    Many practitioners posit that refrigeration or cold chain could extend the shelf life of food products. However, not all the products are suited for freezing, and the deterioration curve may not be altered greatly after applying new technology. Therefore, our research focuses on strategic technology investment from the perspectives of implementation efficiency and learning cost.

Financial metrics that predict supply chain effectiveness: Diep N. Ly

Many organisations are attempting to gain a competitive advantage through supply chain integration but struggle for efficiency and effectiveness. Effective management in a supply chain must consider using financial metrics, which reveal characteristics that are not apparent when merely reviewing data.

Many research papers empirically assess the influence of supply chain performance factors on financial performance of a firm. Yet, supply chain effectiveness measurement using integrated metrics that include both supply chain factors and financial performance factors have not been adopted.

The aim of Diep’s research is to design a tool for Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) to evaluate the health of the supply chain as well as to predict the failures. Her key research questions are:

  1. Can we use publicly available financial metrics combined with supply chain knowledge to predict company failures?
  2. How do operations and supply chain metrics feed into financial metrics or vice versa? Can we design an early warning system as an issue detector of the health/effectiveness of the supply chain for CFOs?
  3. How should these metrics change depending on a company’s size and/or strategic positioning?

Sustainability and Supply Chain Trade-offs for Agro-based Products: Mahsa Boroushaki

Researchers and practitioners have paid considerable attention to sustainable supply chain management in recent years, particularly in the agricultural sector. Traditionally, supply chain management has mainly focused on economic and financial business performance, while sustainable supply chain management focuses on the integration of environmental and social objectives that extend the economic dimension to the triple bottom line or beyond. The importance of a sustainable agricultural supply chain lies in the consequence of agricultural activities on the earth's environment.

This research focuses on environmental issues, an integral part of the broader sustainability framework, in agricultural supply chain management. First of all, we seek a closer integration of supply chain management and life cycle assessment, a primary approach enabling a comprehensive assessment of a product's environmental sustainability throughout the product's supply chain. We address the environmental sustainability trade-offs in addition to the risks related to the environmental issues in the supply chain. Second, considering consumers' willingness to pay for environmentally friendly products and the power structure in the agricultural value chain, we build a game-theoretical model that captures consumers' heterogeneity in their valuation of sustainable and traditional products. This work provides insight into whether sustainable production is economically beneficial for agricultural supply chain members.

Finally, this research investigates under what condition using a more efficient technology (as means of sustainable production) in agricultural systems counterintuitively deteriorates the natural environment or offsets the efficiency benefit. We propose a model that evaluates the farmers' decisions on irrigation systems from environmental and economic perspectives. In addition, the proposed model accommodates the consequences of government interventions on environmental and economic factors. Overall, this research provides implications on sustainable agricultural supply chain trade-offs from an environmental perspective.