The ODT department at the Kelley School of Business sponsored and hosted the 2017 Closed-Loop Supply Chains Workshop. The workshop is an annual event that focuses on products in different industries from the design stages through end-of-life recovery, and Indiana offered some unique opportunities for the attendees. Researchers representing 33 different academic institutions from around the world participated in the workshop. Kelley Professor of Operations Management Gil Souza served as the chair of a committee that also included James Abbey from Texas A&M University and Daniel Guide from Pennsylvania State University.

Participants attended a variety of events during the workshop, including panels, discussions, presentations, etc. One day of the workshop focused more on current closed-loop supply chains research with a research panel on servicizing moderated by Luk Van Wassenhove (INSEAD) with the participation of Vishal Agrawal (Georgetown University) and Yannis Bellos (George Mason University) and presentations by PhD students from the University of Graz, University of Maryland, INSEAD, and Georgia Tech about their latest projects. The topics for their presentations ranged from medical supply chains to business models to provide countries with access to electricity.

The other day of the workshop provided a perspective from the corporate side of these supply chains. Theodosia Rush (a Kelley alum) from Cummins and James Crane from GE Aviation presented current problems facing the supply chains within their various industries. Ms. Rush focused primarily on remanufacturing (“ReCon”) at Cummins, whereas Mr. Crane focused on GE’s servicizing model for aircraft engines (“pay by the hour”). Following the presentations, the attendees broke into small groups for discussions, reporting back their perspectives on the corporate presentations to the whole group. One group stated that “Cummins, Xerox, and GE have demonstrated that servitization and reman are feasible and profitable, and that lack of appropriate [accounting] costing tools and information transparency [may] hinder implementation [of such business models more widely].” Another team commented on the feasibility of a servicizing model for Cummins, indicating that it may be more appropriate for some segments and business units, such as generator sets.