Supply Chain Lecture is Now "Live"

Thanks to my hosts at the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis, my lecture on supply chain networks in a global economy with a focus on vulnerabilities and synergies and what can be learned from 50 years of transportation research, which was part of the Spring 2009 series, is now "live" and online. The talk was videotaped at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst last Friday and broadcast live to the audience at UC Davis. It is now available for viewing online along with the presentation slides. The introduction is a bit lengthy and the technology did not work perfectly but the 90 minute lecture is now more or less intact and available in this format.

Special thanks go out to Susan Milne and Emid LaClaire of the IT staff at the Isenberg School and to Ning Wan at UC Davis for making this video event possible. Also, I acknowledge my UC Davis colleagues and hosts Professor Mokhtarian and Professor Fan. Finally, I thank my doctoral students: Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, Amir Masoumi, and Min Yu for being my "physical" audience at the Isenberg School during the live videostreaming.

To Merge or Not to Merge

The big news today is the merger of Pfizer and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, to the tune of $68 billion. Clearly, some of the potential benefits will involve the integration of these global firms' supply chain networks.

Hot off the press regarding the topic of horizontal mergers and acquisitions through supply chain integration, is the leading paper in the journal Transportation Research E: Logistics and Transportation Review, which I wrote way back in 2007, and which now appears in volume 45 (2009), pp. 1-15.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, one of my primary areas of research is operations research / management science, which involves the science of better decision-making. Our professional society is called INFORMS (The Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences) and there are now associated with it a growing number of bloggers. INFORMS has, as its members, academics, researchers, practitioners, as well as students, and the topics tackled by its members are some of the most pressing ones today.