A Proposal for Supply Chain Management Research That Matters: Sixteen High Priority Research Projects for the Future

On May 4th, 2016 in Milton, Ontario, the World Class Supply Chain 2016 Summit was held in partnership between CN Rail and Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business & Economics to realize an ambitious goal: raise knowledge of contemporary supply chain management (SCM) issues through genuine peer-­‐to-­‐peer dialogue among practitioners and scholars. A principal element of that knowledge is an answer to the question: to gain valid and reliable insights for attaining SCM excellence, what issues must be researched further? This White Paper—which is the second of the summit’s two White Papers—addresses the question by proposing a research agenda comprising 16 research projects. This research agenda covers the following: The current state of research knowledge on issues that are of the highest priority to today’s SCM professionals Important gaps in current research knowledge and, consequently, the major questions that should be answered in sixteen future research projects aimed at addressing those gaps Ways in which the research projects can be incorporated into student training and be supported by Canada’s major research funding agencies That content comes from using the summit’s deliberations to guide systematic reviews of both the SCM research literature and Canadian institutional mechanisms that are geared towards building knowledge through research. The major conclusions from those reviews can be summarized as follows: While the research literature to date has yielded useful insights to inform the pursuit of SCM excellence, several research questions of immense practical importance remain unanswered or, at best, inadequately answered The body of research required to answer those questions will have to focus on what the summit’s first White Paper presented as four highly impactful levers that SCM executives must expertly handle to attain excellence: collaboration; information; technology; and talent The proposed research agenda can be pursued in ways that achieve the two inter-­‐related goals of creating new actionable knowledge and building the capacity of today’s students to become tomorrow’s practitioners and contributors to ongoing knowledge growth in the SCM field This White Paper’s details underlying these conclusions build on the information presented in the summit’s first White Paper. That is, while the first White Paper (White Paper 1) identified general SCM themes for which the research needs are most urgent, this White Paper goes further along the path of industry-academia knowledge co-creation. It does so by examining and articulating those needs against the backdrop of available research findings, translating the needs into specific research projects that should be pursued, and providing guidelines for how those projects can be carried out

Bringing Global Sourcing into the Classroom: Experiential Learning via Software Development Project

Global sourcing of software development has imposed new skill requirements on Information Technology (IT) personnel. In the U.S., this has resulted in a paradigm shift from technical to softer skills such as communications and virtual team management. Higher education institutions must, consequently, initiate innovative curriculum transformations to better prepare students for these emerging workforce needs. This paper describes one such venture between Marquette University (MU), U.S.A. and Management Development Institute (MDI), India, wherein IT students at MU collaborated with Management Information Systems (MIS) students at MDI on an offshore software development project. The class environment replicated an offshore client/vendor relationship in a fully virtual setting while integrating communications and virtual team management with traditional IT project management principles. Course measures indicated that students benefited from this project, gained first-hand experience in the process of software offshoring, and learned skills critical for conduct of global business. For faculty considering such initiatives, we describe the design and administration of this class over two semesters, lessons learned from our engagement, and factors critical to success of such initiatives and those detrimental to their sustenance

Collaborative multidisciplinary learning : quantity surveying students’ perspectives

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of QS programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multi-disciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multi-disciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire which was developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas where a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a project contributor or as a project leader) despite the need for change instigated by the multi-disciplinary (BIM) education revolution. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students’ technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery

Online Project Management for Dynamic e-Collaboration

Today’s collaborative projects demand efficient and productive software application tools for the workplace that will bring remote teams together to get the work done. Dynamic e-collaboration is a necessity for virtual relations and business agreements. It depends on two distinct factors: trust and need. This paper presents a way to manage remote teams using a web application developed with ColMap model of project management in an IT company. The information exposed and shared applications with partners in collaborative projects are based on RBAC. Group collaboration and management software has been proven to successfully manage and coordinate projects.Dynamic E-collaboration, Collaboration Model, Web Application

Can procurement affect design performance?

There is an emerging view in the construction industry that better performance or better value for money can be achieved by integrating teamwork for planning, design and construction of building projects. There are though, two opposing perspectives regarding how changes in traditional design practices should occur. Advocates of sustainable construction in North America posit that it is a matter of evolving processes, moving from a sequential to an iterative approach to design, whereas the British government supports the view that a change in how projects are procured is required to transform the context that dictates relationships among the members of the team. The objective of the research is to study the influence of procurement on the performance of integrated design teams. It analyses, through case studies representing these two perspectives, the influence of procurement on the performance of integrated teams. The research is conclusive in that it is the context created by contractual relationship, and not the process set up for conducting integrated design, that most influence team efficiency. It demonstrates that traditional procurement processes reinforce socio-cognitive barriers that hinder team efficiency. It also illustrates how new procurement modes can transform the dynamics of relationships between the client and the members of the supply chain, and have a positive impact on team performance

Learning to Collaborate: Lessons Learned from Governance Processes Addressing the Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Transportation Corridors Across California

This study was designed to identify lessons learned from experiences of multi-stakeholder collaboration in governance processes focused on adaptation to sea level rise for specific transportation corridors/assets across different areas of California. Four transportation assets in California were selected as case studies: State Route 37 in the Bay Area; the Cardiff Beach Living Shorelines Project and the LOSSAN railroad at Del Mar in San Diego County; and the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles County. The study methods included attendance of policy meetings; document analysis; and interviews of staff at (local, regional, and state) government bodies, transportation agencies, climate collaboratives, etc. The study identified three major governance challenges shared among these cases: (1) stakeholder involvement or collaboration with ‘unusual’ partners; (2) jurisdictional fragmentation; and (3) lack of funding. The lessons learned to address these challenges were: (a) include a wide range of stakeholders early on in the project; (b) identify an intermediary or facilitator with relevant knowledge and social capital with the stakeholders; (c) establish a forum for negotiations and information exchange; (d) draft a memorandum of understanding with the rules of collaboration; (e) appoint a project manager to tie all the project parts and stakeholders together and sustain engagement; (f) structure the collaboration in tiers from technical/operational to executive/political; (g) explore options to make any given project a multi-benefit project; (h) advocate for a multi-year stream of funding rather than a lump sum; (i) leverage collaboration for funding and highlight, to potential funders, the collaborative element as a means to increase the efficiency of their investment. Issues to consider when deriving lessons from other jurisdictions were: differences in capacity, or available resources and staff; the numbers of actors involved; pre-existing positive collaborative relationships between the actors; exposure of transportation assets to sea-level rise; existing vulnerabilities of the corridor/asset; and the economic relevance of the corridor/asset

The ASCCR Frame for Learning Essential Collaboration Skills

Statistics and data science are especially collaborative disciplines that typically require practitioners to interact with many different people or groups. Consequently, interdisciplinary collaboration skills are part of the personal and professional skills essential for success as an applied statistician or data scientist. These skills are learnable and teachable, and learning and improving collaboration skills provides a way to enhance one's practice of statistics and data science. To help individuals learn these skills and organizations to teach them, we have developed a framework covering five essential components of statistical collaboration: Attitude, Structure, Content, Communication, and Relationship. We call this the ASCCR Frame. This framework can be incorporated into formal training programs in the classroom or on the job and can also be used by individuals through self-study. We show how this framework can be applied specifically to statisticians and data scientists to improve their collaboration skills and their interdisciplinary impact. We believe that the ASCCR Frame can help organize and stimulate research and teaching in interdisciplinary collaboration and call on individuals and organizations to begin generating evidence regarding its effectiveness.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. Updated to this Version 5 by adding a few more references, discussing how to teach ASCCR in the classroom, calling on others to add to research supporting the use of the ASCCR Frame, and adding discussion of ethics and reproducible researc

Bringing Global Sourcing into The Classroom: Experiential Learning Via a Global Software Development Project

The growing trend in offshore software development has imposed new skills requirements on collaborating global partners. In the U.S. this has translated into skill sets that include communications, project management, business analysis, and team management. In a virtual setting, these skills take on a complex proportion. This paper describes an educational initiative in offshore software development between undergraduate students enrolled in a project management course at Marquette University, USA and graduate business students enrolled in an Information Systems Analysis and Design course at Management Development Institute, India. The course replicated an offshore client/vendor relationship in a virtual setting. For faculty considering such initiatives, this paper describes the setting and factors critical to success of this initiative and cautions against others that can be detrimental to such an effort