Operations & Decision Technologies

Professor’s research on piracy sparks discussion in the tech community and beyond

Posted on February 18, 2019 by George Vlahakis

Millions of people illegally download television programs and movies and other types of digital assets annually.

While companies decry the loss of potential business, new research by Antino Kim, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies, found that a moderate level of piracy can have a positive impact on the bottom line for both the manufacturer and the retailer — and not at the expense of consumers.

Kim’s paper with two co-authors, “The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain,” appears in the December 2018 edition of MIS Quarterly.

(more…)

Kelley Alum Elevates Students’ Educational Experiences

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Kelley School

Annie Oler is a shining example of the Kelley ability to turn moments into momentum. A 2008 Kelley graduate with majors in supply chain and finance, she is dedicated to her career while still devoting time and energy to the school that started her down her path to success.

Reflecting on her experiences, Oler states, “Knowing how much Kelley prepared me for the business world and seeing how valuable my degree and skills are to the industry really energizes me to continue to give back to Kelley. Not only did I feel like I had a leg up when I graduated, but now as a recruiter on the other side of the table, Kelley has continued to raise the bar, and their students are a direct example of that.”

Oler is currently senior manager of procurement enablement at Grainger. Oler helps design Grainger’s procurement strategies and negotiation tactics to be leveraged during supplier cost and contract negotiations. Her work, while spanning the entire global organization, mainly focuses on North American and European business units. This scope is still relatively new, following Grainger’s shift to offer customers their products globally.

In addition to her extensive current role, Oler has been Grainger’s Indiana University manager since 2010. This role requires Oler to use her knowledge and professional skills to help students develop their own skills and transform them into prime candidates for any position.

(more…)

Undergraduate Students Learn about Cutting-Edge Technologies in Design Your Future Day

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Kelley School

Even though the current generation of undergraduate students has grown up with near-constant access to computers, smartphones, and social media, sometimes new technology and technology-driven careers can seem daunting, especially since many students have to wait until their senior year to experience real-world applications. However, if we can create positive experiences for these students earlier in their undergraduate careers, it might open up a whole new set of opportunities for them, or at the very least, help them better understand how cutting-edge technologies empower businesses. This is exactly what operations and decision technologies faculty member Taryn Malher had in mind when she developed Design Your Future Day.

Design Your Future Day was created for freshman and sophomore students in college, especially those who are underrepresented minorities in the field of business. Deepika Murugappan, a Kelley junior studying technology management, finance, and accounting, commented that she “was attracted to the event due to the ability to work with new technology in a fun way and playing a game would be a great way to learn more about it.” Malher also wanted students to be able to meet people who work in the field, so with some assistance from Alex Barsi Lopes, clinical professor of operations and decision technologies, representatives from Lilly, Deloitte, and Cummins not only attended the event but participated in the activities.

To foster new relationships, all of the participants were split into teams with two freshmen and/or sophomore participants, one female upperclassman volunteer, and one industry representative per team.The teams worked together run a business in a simulated environment with ERPsim, a training tool for real-world industry using SAP’s ERP solutions. The online simulations put all of the teams in the same market selling dairy products in Germany. The teams had to use pricing and procurement strategies while balancing their operating costs to make the most money during each of the four rounds. Since everyone on the team had a different role within the business, each was presented with different information that would inform business decisions.

(more…)

Kelley’s MBA Student Team Shines in the 7th Annual SABR Analytics Conference

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Kelley School

During the spring 2018 semester, Kelley MBA Class of 2018 students Justin Booms, Shayn Kail, Greg Khoury, Nick Pacchioli, and Yin-Cheng Tai earned 2nd place in a case competition dedicated to the analytics behind baseball at the 7th Annual SABR Analytics Conference, hosted by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

On March 2, 2018, the competition hosts released the specifics about the case that the team would explore in order to provide a realistic, thorough solution. The case asked the students to optimize the average angle for balls hit by four different major league hitters using data from publicly available sources. The students had just five days to do all their research and prepare a presentation of their analysis for a panel of judges comprised of representatives from Major League teams and the Major League Baseball (MLB) office.

(more…)

ODT Department Hosts the Closed-Loop Supply Chains Workshop

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Kelley School

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.

(more…)

Kelley alum is the National Leader of the Information Delivery Practice at Deloitte and the Executive Partner for Kelley’s Digital Intelligence Initiative

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Kelley School

Kelley alum Mark Zozulia is the National Leader of the Information Delivery Practice at Deloitte, consisting of more than 2,000 people in the US and India. He is also the Executive Partner for the Digital Intelligence Initiative with Kelley School of Business. Through a new Digital Intelligence Initiative (DII), Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business is helping faculty better prepare students for careers involving emerging technological innovations. DII is also providing students with leadership and research opportunities in business analytics, cloud computing, intelligent systems, pervasive technologies and augmented reality. With a generous pledge, Deloitte Consulting LLP is the founding partner for this initiative for the next five years.

The DII encompasses the Kelley’s Institute for Business Analytics (IBA), of which Deloitte was a founding partner in 2012, and now has 33 companies on its board, along with two new entities, the Institute for Digital Enterprise and ODT Connect.

Like the IBA, the new Institute for Digital Enterprise (IDE) supports programs that prepare students to solve business problems using current and soon-to-be leading practices in cloud computing, pervasive technologies, the Internet of Things, and machine intelligence.

(more…)

Undergraduate Supply Chain Major Steps into Research

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Kelley School

Hao Ding, a 2015 Kelley graduate, had been interested in supply chain management for a while and was considering a Ph.D. in operations management during his undergraduate studies.

“I always believed that the academic path fit me,” said Ding, “I approached Professor Alfonso Pedraza-Martinez, associate professor of Operations and Decision Technologies at Kelley, for guidance and gladly found more than what I asked for.” This is how Ding and Pedraza-Martinez started working together on a research project to find out if vehicle fleet reduction at some United Nations (UN) bases would be beneficial to the organization’s system.

Efficiency is important in running effective humanitarian aid operations like the UN’s efforts worldwide, and practitioners search for well-informed, research-based assessments to guide their strategies, including timely distribution of workers and goods. These distributions often occur in rocky terrain or where roads are hard to traverse, which is why organizations purchase four-wheel drive vehicles with specialized navigation tools and other features to help workers travel in this environment. However, the UN wanted to reassess their vehicle fleet needs at various locations because they might have more field cars than they needed to be efficient.

(more…)

MBA Students Learn About Logistics and Artificial Intelligence in Transportation

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Kelley School

In the fall of 2015, 35 corporate representatives from the transportation industry got together for one purpose: to enrich the student experience by introducing programs and events that would further supply chain, operations, and transportation-related higher education at Kelley. As of this past fall, the board has grown to 42 members, representing 39 transportation-oriented companies, striving to share their successes and challenges in the field of transportation with Kelley MBA students, with the Supply Chain Academy (SCA) in particular.

Between the annual symposium, biannual meetings, and roundtable discussions about current transportation topics, such as economic impacts on transportation logistics and artificial intelligence in transportation, as well as student-oriented trips to DSC Logistics Distribution Center for Kraft-Heinz, they have provided the SCA students with a lot of unique educational opportunities outside of the classroom with practitioners in the field. This spring, the board is sponsoring part of the Systems and Operations Management Association (SOMA)’s Spring Trek for the students to travel to Kroger, PMG, GE, and Luxottica among other locations.

Students have found this exposure to the companies and their representatives to be really helpful in adding opportunities to their education here at Kelley.

Scott Hedden, a 2019 MBA Candidate and Supply Chain Academy student, reflects on his experience with the board, stating “I truly enjoyed the opportunity to learn from a mix of the industry’s CEOs, Presidents, VPs and other top-level leadership to gain insights on where their focus lies and what worries keep them up at night. It was fascinating to connect the concepts we are learning as MBA students to problems these folks are solving on a daily basis, and sitting in on their discussions about the future of transportation gave us the opportunity to think like an executive in the industry!”

Rodney P. Parker’s research suggests that small changes to organ procurement system could lead to more life-saving transplants

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Kelley School

Slight changes to the system for allocating deceased-donor kidneys could result in higher rates of organ procurement and lead to more kidney transplants across the country, according to new research co-authored by ODT faculty, Rodney P. Parker. “Any increase in supply will result in saved lives,” said Rodney P. Parker, an associate professor of operations management in ODT at Kelley. “The lists of patients awaiting kidney transplantation are lengthy and growing. Many of these patients undergo expensive and inconvenient dialysis treatment while waiting.”

Parker and three other researchers studied three risk factors that explain the geographic differences in procuring deceased-donor kidneys across the United States: organ quality, the median wait time for donation and the degree of competition between transplantation centers in the area. They found an expected annual increase in procured organs ranges from 58 (an increase of 0.5 percent of all procured kidneys) to 174 days (an increase of 1.2 percent), depending on regional or national sharing. In 2015, 87,538 patients with end-stage renal disease died while on dialysis (16.3 percent of all dialysis patients are awaiting kidney transplants), and 18,805 kidney transplantations were performed that same year. The majority, 13,132, came from cadaveric donors. More than 100,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant in the U.S, with more than 3,000 patients added to the list each month, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

This study, which appears in the journal Production and Operations Management, is among the first to consider how to increase the supply of procured kidneys, rather than changing demand or considering different ways of allocating a fixed supply. The researchers analyzed the effects of a 2014 policy change that allows lower-quality kidneys—considered the bottom 15 percent of available organs—to be immediately offered more widely in a region without seeking patients only in the local area. They found that expanding the geographic range also could save the lives of many who currently are less likely to receive a kidney based on where they live.

(more…)