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

Innovation in a Complex, Uncertain World: Clarifying the Questions, Seeking the Answers

Innovation has at least 40 definitions, many of which can lay claim to being reliable and valid guidelines for organizations to make improvements by doing something new and different. Towards the goal of providing insights to facilitate fruitful pursuit of supply chain, the Third Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit focused on the theme of Innovation in a Complex, Uncertain World. At this invitation-only summit on May 9th, 2018 in Milton, Ontario, executives, scholars, and students discussed a range of innovation topics. The core of those discussions sought clarity on the following: The complexities, uncertainties, and challenges that are prompting the need for innovation in contemporary supply chains Effective ways for tapping into the potential to innovate New ideas from the next generation of researchers and practitioners Questions that demand rigorous research about innovation in supply chains The summit addressed those four issues with two keynote presentations, a panel discussion, and three-minute lightning talk presentations by five students (from the doctoral through to the undergraduate level). In addition to giving voice to the next generation (via the students’ 3-minute presentations), the summit was also designed to uncover perspectives from business disciplines outside of supply chain management (SCM). This was reflected mainly in the inclusion of panelists whose expertise on the subject of innovation was built in the field of entrepreneurship. Incorporating perspectives from the next generation and from beyond the traditional scope of SCM proved useful in generating some insightful conclusions. Among those conclusions, four of the main ones are: Effective usage of supply chain analytics has the potential to yield meaningful returns for transportation services providers The creativity necessary for innovation can be learned so employers should invest in cultivating creativity and its application to challenges of interest, particularly for new and young employees Though seemingly bewildering, the complexity and challenges in modern supply chains represent opportunity for innovation Innovations need not be revolutionary in order to be of real value to an organization firm and its stakeholders This white paper reports on (a) the underlying details of those points (e.g., specific real world examples presented to reinforce those points), (b) some critical unanswered questions that surround those points, and (c) potential research projects to address those questions. These helped to solidify the summit as a valuable contributor to industry-academia deliberations of relevance to the SCM field

World Class Supply Chain 2019: Next Generation Ideas

Next Generation Ideas, being the theme for the Fourth Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit, reflected summit’s focus on understanding what is becoming and what will continue to be of increasingly of high priority for current and future supply chain professionals. The summit, which was held on May 8th, 2019 in Milton, Ontario, brought together invited executives, scholars, and students to present and carefully examine a range of emerging ideas that are worthy of the supply chain community’s interest. The diversity of such ideas (e.g., new technologies, geopolitical developments, and the role of supply chain analytics) necessitated a diverse range of perspectives for structuring the summit deliberations. This was done through a summit program comprising three presentations to feature the following perspectives: Perspectives of a vastly experienced industry executive perspective who has amassed an extensive body of material on ecological considerations in supply chains Perspectives of an economist with evidence-based understanding of how decisions by national governments impact firms with both domestic and transnational supply chains Perspectives of a supply chain scholar whose research projects are strongly motivated by how companies have had (and will have) to rethink their distribution networks From the formal presentations and the question and answer component for each presentation, the essence of the insights could be summarized by this notion: While firms must still exemplify traditional supply chain fundamentals (trusted partners, robust IT infrastructure, etc.), they face the additional and an increasingly pressing imperative of needing the agility to be responsive to changes, especially from customers and competitors. Arguably, this is not an original statement because one can make a convincing case that dynamic change has always been a feature of the business landscape. Rather than originality, the statement is meant to underscore that, at this time in the development of the supply chain field, practitioners seem to be experiencing a very distinct level of bewilderment about the array of changes to be contemplated. The summit not only brought that bewilderment to the fore, it also: facilitated discussion of the opportunities resulting from the changes presented real-world examples of innovative and entrepreneurial responses to the changes addressed the interests and concerns of students - the next generation of supply chain professionals This white paper reports on (1) the substantive specifics of those elements of the summit and (2) issues requiring further study in order to be understood more clearly

Actionable Supply Chain Management Insights for 2016 and Beyond

The summit World Class Supply Chain 2016: Critical to Prosperity , contributed to addressing a need that the Supply Chain Management (SCM) field’s current discourse has deemed as critical: that need is for more academia-­‐industry collaboration to develop the field’s body of actionable knowledge. Held on May 4th, 2016 in Milton, Ontario, the summit addressed that need in a way that proved to be both effective and distinctive in the Canadian SCM environment. The summit, convened in partnership between Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business & Economics and CN Rail, focused on building actionable SCM knowledge to address three core questions: What are the most significant SCM issues to be confronted now and beyond 2016? What SCM practices are imperative now and beyond 2016? What are optimal ways of ensuring that (a) issues of interest to SCM practitioners inform the scholarly activities of research and teaching and (b) the knowledge generated from those scholarly activities reciprocally guide SCM practice? These are important questions for supply chain professionals in their efforts to make sense of today’s business environment that is appropriately viewed as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The structure of the deliberations to address these questions comprised two keynote presentations and three panel discussions, all of which were designed to leverage the collective wisdom that comes from genuine peer-­‐to-­‐peer dialogue between the SCM practitioners and SCM scholars. Specifically, the structure aimed for a balanced blend of industry and academic input and for coverage of the SCM issues of greatest interest to attendees (as determined through a pre-­‐summit survey of attendees). The structure produced impressively wide-­‐ranging deliberations on the aforementioned questions. The essence of the resulting findings from the summit can be distilled into three messages: Given today’s globally significant trends such as changes in population demographics, four highly impactful levers that SCM executives must expertly handle to attain excellence are: collaboration; information; technology; and talent Government policy, especially for infrastructure, is a significant determinant of SCM excellence There is tremendous potential for mutually beneficial industry-academia knowledge co-creation/sharing aimed at research and student training This white paper reports on those findings as well as on the summit’s success in realizing its vision of fostering mutually beneficial industry-academia dialogue. The paper also documents what emerged as matters that are inadequately understood and should therefore be targeted in the ongoing quest for deeper understanding of actionable SCM insights. Deliberations throughout the day on May 4th, 2016 and the encouraging results from the pre-­‐summit and post-­‐summit surveys have provided much inspiration to enthusiastically undertake that quest. The undertaking will be through initiatives that include future research projects as well as next year’s summit–World Class Supply Chain 2017

Practical Supply Chain Management Knowledge from Industry-Academia Dialogue

Value co-creation, which can be defined as a joint initiative by two or more supply chain members to create value that cannot be created by the sole effort of one member, is a cornerstone concept in Supply Chain Management (SCM). To provide needed clarity about the concept, the invitation-only summit World Class Supply Chain 2017: Value Co-creation , was convened on May 10th, 2017 in Milton, Ontario. The summit brought together accomplished executives, scholars, and students in the SCM field to engage in dialogue directed at uncovering actionable insights about three crucial issues: The business benefits of value co-creation The actions required for successful value co-creation The obstacles to value co-creation and ways to overcome them The deliberations covered an extensive range of content that included concrete real-world examples to reinforce the insights. Those insights can be summarized in the following three major points: Information technology innovations can (a) come from an industry’s established players instead of only from new entrants and (b) significantly improve not only standard operational efficiency metrics in supply chains but also how supply chains parties interact with each other to create value. The suite of key success factors in value co-creation spans three major stages of activities for any organization: (i) preparing for its discussions with potential co-creation partners, (ii) having those discussions with an intent to find common ground on the most important partnership parameters, and (iii) managing the ongoing relationship(s) with selected partners. To be better poised for future success in value co-creation, today’s young, upcoming professionals (e.g., internship and entry-level jobs) must have jobs that are designed with a view to nurturing interpersonal skills in forming and sustaining effective inter-organizational business relationships

A Continuous Review Inventory System with Lost Sales and Emergency Orders

We analyze a continuous review lost sales inventory system with two types of orders—regular and emergency. The regular order has a stochastic lead time and is placed with the cheapest acceptable supplier. The emergency order has a deterministic lead time is placed with a local supplier who has a higher price. The emergency order is not always filled since the supplier may not have the ability to provide the order on an emergency basis at all times. This emergency order has a higher cost per item and has a known probability of being filled. The total costs for this system are compared to a system without emergency placement of orders. This paper provides managers with a tool to assess when dual sourcing is cost optimal by comparing the single sourcing and dual sourcing models

Actionable Supply Chain Management Insights for 2016 and Beyond

The summit World Class Supply Chain 2016: Critical to Prosperity , contributed to addressing a need that the Supply Chain Management (SCM) field’s current discourse has deemed as critical: that need is for more academia-­‐industry collaboration to develop the field’s body of actionable knowledge. Held on May 4th, 2016 in Milton, Ontario, the summit addressed that need in a way that proved to be both effective and distinctive in the Canadian SCM environment. The summit, convened in partnership between Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business & Economics and CN Rail, focused on building actionable SCM knowledge to address three core questions: What are the most significant SCM issues to be confronted now and beyond 2016? What SCM practices are imperative now and beyond 2016? What are optimal ways of ensuring that (a) issues of interest to SCM practitioners inform the scholarly activities of research and teaching and (b) the knowledge generated from those scholarly activities reciprocally guide SCM practice? These are important questions for supply chain professionals in their efforts to make sense of today’s business environment that is appropriately viewed as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The structure of the deliberations to address these questions comprised two keynote presentations and three panel discussions, all of which were designed to leverage the collective wisdom that comes from genuine peer-­‐to-­‐peer dialogue between the SCM practitioners and SCM scholars. Specifically, the structure aimed for a balanced blend of industry and academic input and for coverage of the SCM issues of greatest interest to attendees (as determined through a pre-­‐summit survey of attendees). The structure produced impressively wide-­‐ranging deliberations on the aforementioned questions. The essence of the resulting findings from the summit can be distilled into three messages: Given today’s globally significant trends such as changes in population demographics, four highly impactful levers that SCM executives must expertly handle to attain excellence are: collaboration; information; technology; and talent Government policy, especially for infrastructure, is a significant determinant of SCM excellence There is tremendous potential for mutually beneficial industry-academia knowledge co-creation/sharing aimed at research and student training This white paper reports on those findings as well as on the summit’s success in realizing its vision of fostering mutually beneficial industry-academia dialogue. The paper also documents what emerged as matters that are inadequately understood and should therefore be targeted in the ongoing quest for deeper understanding of actionable SCM insights. Deliberations throughout the day on May 4th, 2016 and the encouraging results from the pre-­‐summit and post-­‐summit surveys have provided much inspiration to enthusiastically undertake that quest. The undertaking will be through initiatives that include future research projects as well as next year’s summit–World Class Supply Chain 2017

World Class Supply Chain 2021: Vision 2030: SCM in a New Decade

The Fifth Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit on May 5th, 2021 was momentous in at least threes ways: First, it marked a return to having the annual summit following the cancellation of the 2021 summit because of the COVID- 19 pandemic. Second, in light of ongoing pandemic-related restrictions on in-person gathering, the 2021 summit was convened virtually –this meant leveraging needed digital technology platform and technological savvy of the summit planning team personnel. Third, in light of how the pandemic has affected supply chains, the summit theme (Vision 2030 -SCM in a New Decade) and, the industry representation of the speakers, and the content aligned with the kind of thinking needed for supply chains to survive the pandemic and thrive in the years ahead. In particular, because container ports are reliable barometers of economic activity such as how well an economy is recovering from the pandemic, the summit’s panel discussion was expressly designed to shed light on insights from panelists who are executives at key North American ports: Halifax; Mobile (Alabama); Vancouver; and Prince Rupert. The panel discussion focused on eight questions that ranged from the initial pandemic impacts on container ports through to actions and ideas to handle both immediate and imminent challenges. Three of the most prominent issues in the panel discussion were (i) technology, (ii) collaboration/partnerships, and (ii) human capital. A noteworthy synopsis of some of these issues is the following quote from panelist Brian Friesen (the Prince Rupert Port Authority’s Vice-President of Trade Development & Communications, Prince Rupert Port Authority): It’s a people business; organizations don’t do business with one another, people who work at those organizations do business with one another . To help transition the summit’s deliberations from reflection on the pandemic’s supply chain effects and towards development of ideas for facilitating recovery, the chosen keynote topic was the road ahead. In the keynote address by Professor Glenn Richey (the Harbert Eminent Scholar and Chair in Auburn University’s Department of Supply Chain Management) explained several trends. For practitioners, those included building redundancy in supply chains (i.e., based on companies critically examining the efficacy of extremely lean supply chains for their unique circumstances), some shift to regional sourcing, chains, pandemic-induced renewal of emphasis on ecological sustainability, global supply chain complexity, and technologies that, currently, are not widely adopted. In looking at these trends from the perspective of supply chain scholars, Professor Richey discussed them as some of the areas in which research is needed in order to answer critical questions such as how to responsibly and sensitively approach cultural barriers to artificial Intelligence/machine learning. This rest of this white paper provides further elaboration on these points as well as the aforementioned points from the panel discussion

Innovation in a Complex, Uncertain World: Clarifying the Questions, Seeking the Answers

Innovation has at least 40 definitions, many of which can lay claim to being reliable and valid guidelines for organizations to make improvements by doing something new and different. Towards the goal of providing insights to facilitate fruitful pursuit of supply chain, the Third Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit focused on the theme of Innovation in a Complex, Uncertain World. At this invitation-only summit on May 9th, 2018 in Milton, Ontario, executives, scholars, and students discussed a range of innovation topics. The core of those discussions sought clarity on the following: The complexities, uncertainties, and challenges that are prompting the need for innovation in contemporary supply chains Effective ways for tapping into the potential to innovate New ideas from the next generation of researchers and practitioners Questions that demand rigorous research about innovation in supply chains The summit addressed those four issues with two keynote presentations, a panel discussion, and three-minute lightning talk presentations by five students (from the doctoral through to the undergraduate level). In addition to giving voice to the next generation (via the students’ 3-minute presentations), the summit was also designed to uncover perspectives from business disciplines outside of supply chain management (SCM). This was reflected mainly in the inclusion of panelists whose expertise on the subject of innovation was built in the field of entrepreneurship. Incorporating perspectives from the next generation and from beyond the traditional scope of SCM proved useful in generating some insightful conclusions. Among those conclusions, four of the main ones are: Effective usage of supply chain analytics has the potential to yield meaningful returns for transportation services providers The creativity necessary for innovation can be learned so employers should invest in cultivating creativity and its application to challenges of interest, particularly for new and young employees Though seemingly bewildering, the complexity and challenges in modern supply chains represent opportunity for innovation Innovations need not be revolutionary in order to be of real value to an organization firm and its stakeholders This white paper reports on (a) the underlying details of those points (e.g., specific real world examples presented to reinforce those points), (b) some critical unanswered questions that surround those points, and (c) potential research projects to address those questions. These helped to solidify the summit as a valuable contributor to industry-academia deliberations of relevance to the SCM field

World Class Supply Chain 2022: Creating a Sustainable Future

The Sixth Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit on May 4th, 2022 was a landmark in at least threes ways: First, it marked a return to having the annual summit in-person following the COVID-driven cancellation of the 2020 summit and the virtual delivery format of the 2021 summit. Second, the 2022 summit’s hybrid format (simultaneous in-person delivery in Milton, Ontario and online delivery to delegates who attended virtually) required the summit planning team to creatively deploy teleconferencing tools that characterise the pandemic-era. Third, for the very first time, we scheduled a Student Forum segment in which students presented material from their immersive experience with supply chain issues that two Canadian organizations grappled with. This innovative Student Forum, like the panel of executives, and the keynote presentation, yielded thought-provoking perspectives on the summit theme: Creating a Sustainable Future. The panel discussion emphasized five key issues related to supply chain sustainability, the Student Forum addressed issues relevant to established manufacturer as well as start-up manufacturers, and the keynote presentation focused on post-pandemic supply chains. Across the extensive range of topics that these speakers covered during their formal delivery and their less formal but scheduled fireside chats with the audience, three topics took the lion’s share of the dialogue: (i) Sustainability touches a very broad range of a company’s internal and external activities (ii) The transition from a company’s current position to its desired position is very unlikely to be straightforward and direct (iii) Companies need to be more proactive in identifying, recruiting, and nurturing new talent for supply chains of the future The importance of not only considering what has happened and/or is happening in supply chains but also what could happen in the future was featured throughout the day’s dialogue and was evidently epitomized in the title of Professor Alan Amling’s keynote address: Post-pandemic SCM Practices, Insights, and Predictions. Some notable future supply chain items in his presentation include natural resource scarcity, population growth, demographic shifts, and man-made supply chain disruptions. These are among the insights that will be explicated in this white paper