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Note: The Supply Chain, Operations and Technology Management area is not accepting new applications for the fall 2021 intake. They will accept new students for the fall 2022 intake. The application portal for next year's cycle will open on Oct. 15, 2021.
The disciplines of Supply Chain, Operations and Technology Management seek answers to fundamental questions about the design, production, and delivery of goods and services. We welcome applications from students with backgrounds in business, mathematics, engineering, economics and related fields. Graduates of our PhD are prepared for a career in academia or research.
We create a nurturing environment where you have access to:
- A personalized approach with a small student-to-faculty ratio.
- Cutting-edge research training by active leading researchers.
- Our Centre for Supply Chain Management whose mission is to create close ties between industry and academia.
- Our "Distinguished Speaker Series," which brings in world class presenters from around the globe.
Our Faculty and Students
Our 13 faculty are leading researchers in fields such as sustainable and closed-loop supply chain management, logistics and transportation, operations management, management of innovation and technology, and stochastic modelling.
Over the past five years, faculty in Supply Chain, Operations and Technology Management have received more than $1 million in research grants from funding agencies, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as grants from industry, including $500,000 from CN Rail. Our faculty members have published their research in top-tiered academic journals, including Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing & Services Operations Management, JOM, JORS, Annals of OR, EJOR, Financial Management and IIE Transactions, to name just a few.
Selected Faculty/PhD Student Research Topics
- Customer acquisition, retention, and service quality for a call center: Optimal promotions, priorities, and staffing.
- Socially optimal location of facilities with fixed servers, stochastic demand and congestion.
- Flow control in capacity-constrained queueing systems with non-stationary arrivals.
- The effect of demand-supply mismatches on firm risk.
- Cost Analysis of an (S-1,S) Inventory system with two demand classes and rationing.
- Towards more innovative, eco-efficient sustainable product designs: Proposing a new DEA-based methodology.
- Corporate payout policy, cash savings, and the cost of consistency: Evidence from a structural estimation.
- An analysis of a widely used version of the CUSUM tracking signal.
- Inventory competition for news vendors with profit targets.
- Transshipment between competitive retailers.
- Three essays in product development: Competition, sustainability and channel structure.
- Modeling and analysis of value-based healthcare delivery.
- Exploring hopes and fears from supply chain innovations: An analysis of antecedents and consequences of supply chain knowledge exchanges.
- The transient collaboration model: Theory building, structural formation, and network operationalization.
- The benefit of advanced load information for truckload.
Course Offerings
BU802: Research Methodology
An introduction to the methods and instruments of business research, including scientific method, research design, and measurement. Basic descriptive and inferential statistics will be covered.
BU805: Deterministic Quantitative Analysis
An introduction to deterministic operations research. The course will seek to provide students with the ability to construct sophisticated models of supply chains using deterministic tools. To achieve this objective, both the underlying theory and modelling issues will be addressed.
BU815: Stochastic Analysis and Simulation
The purpose of this course is to introduce doctoral students to non-deterministic mathematical modelling. Topics include continuous-time stochastic processes, Markovian decision processes used to describe, analyze, and design systems such as queues, inventory, reliability, pricing, and quality management.
BU825: Foundations of Supply Chain Management
The important concepts, principles, theories, and business issues involved in SCM business processes. These processes include distribution, procurement, operational integration, information and physical network design, inventory management, transportation, and materials packaging/handling. A key goal of the course is for students to understand the role of academic research in supply chain management.
BU845: Seminar in Supply Chain Management I
An in-depth review of the mathematical models used to address problems in the areas of facility layout, facility location and transportation.
BU855: Seminar in Supply Chain Management II
An in-depth review of the research literature in inventory management and procurement. Inventory topics include both deterministic and stochastic models for one or multiple products, and involving one or multiple echelons of the supply chain. Procurement topics include outsourcing analysis, supplier selection and evaluation, negotiation and design of contracts, and the analysis of strategic alliances.
BU859: Foundations of Operations Management
This course provides intermediate graduate-level examination of the key strategic, tactical and operational issues in converting resource inputs into outputs of goods and services. The course builds an understanding of the key resources and activities in conversion processes, as well as how they are related. These include operations strategy, process design, facility layout, aggregate planning, materials requirements planning, operations scheduling and process control.
EC620: Microeconomics I
The economic theory of business decision making and its application to a variety of problems. Strategic decisions are emphasized.
EC655: Econometrics
A survey of applied econometrics, including basic regression theory and an examination of a variety of econometric applications in both microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Faculty Supervisors
Ignacio Castillo
Professor
Michael Haughton
Professor
CN Fellow in Supply Chain Management
Kevin Hendricks
Professor
Area Coordinator, Operations and Decision Sciences
Sapna Isotupa
Professor
Hamid Noori
Professor
Executive Director, Laurier EMTM
Michael J. Pavlin
Assistant Professor
Chunming (Victor) Shi
Associate Professor
Xuan Zhao
Associate Professor
