Business School

Operations and supply management

Research in operations and supply chain management 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.

Our research encompasses a set of issues that is faced by all large organisations and particularly those that serve a geographically dispersed market. Departmental research in this field is closely associated with the Centre for Supply Chain Management.

Our research currently covers:

Operations strategy
Strategies for business growth in New Zealand medium-sized companies, including operational constraints on growth, strategic pathways to growth, and the application of systems thinking to the design of operational programmes for owner-managers.
Quality control and the optimisation of operations
Applications of multivariate measurement systems in quality improvement and control and new polyhedral approaches to difficult combinatorial optimisation problems in supply chain operations.
Decision-making and interventions in complex systems
Pitfalls in complex decisionmaking in terms of the magnitude, frequency, sequence, and scope of decisions.
Supply chain management in the context of port operations
Transport allocation and scheduling in the Ports of Auckland.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) in the supply chain in New Zealand
The critical characteristics of RFID and how to successfully adopt RFID as an enabling tool in supply chains.