The Experience of Giving a Distinguished Engineering Lecture at Purdue University Was Extraordinary - Thank You!

Last evening I returned from a whirlwind trip to Purdue University, where I was deeply honored to deliver a Distinguished Engineering Lecture entitled: "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks: Trade, Policies, Food Security, and Resilience."

My lecture took place on March 26, 2026, and my travel from Amherst,  MA to West Lafayette, Indiana as well as back was wonderful via shuttles and two legged flights each way via American Airlines. Many thanks to the selfless, unpaid still, TSA workers at Bradley International Airport and at the Indianapolis Airport.

I'd like to thank the Purdue University College of Engineering and the Purdue University Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering for the outstanding hospitality extended to me. It was a great honor and pleasure to be introduced by Associate Dean Nikhilesh Chawla. The Distinguished Engineering Lecture took place in the stunning atrium of the Armstrong Building, named after its alumnus, the astronaut Neil Armstrong. The format was very intellectually engaging with a panel afterwards on: "Bridging Engineering and Agriculture: Innovations for Resilient Supply Chains," with fellow panelists: Purdue University Professors Maksym Chepeliev, Sivaranjani Seetharaman, and Yu She, expertly moderated by Professor Hua Cai. It was very special to be presented by James J. Solberg Head of the Edwardson School Professor Young-Jun Son with a beautiful engraved glass award afterwards. 

A big highlight, after the lively panel discussions, was to meet Associate Vice Provost and Dean of the John Martinson Honors College Professor Felisa (Preciado) Higgins and two undergraduate students from Panama! In my Distinguished Lecture, I spoke about various disruptions to agricultural supply chains (and there are many), as well as trade policies, and resilience, and noted, of course, impacts of the recent drought affecting the Panama Canal as well as wars on Ukraine and in the Middle East. Also, two undergraduate students from Jordan came up to me and presented me with a type-written project plan on Agricultural Supply Networks for their country! Fellow panelist Maksym Chepeliev was born in Ukraine and his sister is now studying at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). It is such a small world - I continue to serve on the Board of Directors of KSE and on its International Academic Board.

Everything surrounding my visit was organized beautifully with great attention to detail. I am very grateful to the exceptional staff members: Leza Dellinger and Cole Stonebraker for making my visit so comfortable and well-planned.

I thoroughly enjoyed the delicious welcome dinner with Professors Susan Hunter, David Johnson (who recently returned from Singapore), and Yuehwern Yih and terrific conversations; breakfast with fellow panelists and moderator; a catered lunch, plus closing dinner at a fabulous Japanese restaurant with exceptional host James J. Solberg Head Professor Young-Jun Son and faculty: Professors Reem Khir, Miaolan Xie, Sivaranjani Seetharaman, and Liwei Jiang. We had extra excitement at that dinner because of a tornado siren warning and lots of lightning. The positive excitement continued when Purdue beat Texas in the Sweet Sixteen basketball tournament.

Other highlights included a tour of the Gateway Lab, thanks to David Kish, PE, and two excellent undergraduate students, one of whom was named Kai and was from LA, and the other one, whose name I did not catch, was from Tennessee. 

I'm very grateful to Engineering Dean Arvind Raman for taking the time to meet with me and to show me, from his stunning outdoor office suite balcony, a "replica" trail of Armstrong's lunar footprints marking: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Thanks also to Professors Srinivasan Chandrasekar and Nan Kong for the friendly, engaging conversations. Amazingly, Dr. Kong remembered me when I gave a talk at the University of Pittsburgh through the INFORMS Speakers Program, when he was a graduate student there!

The meeting with Dr. Chandresakar took place in a boardroom with paintings of  Professor Yuehwern Yih, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Dr. Yih is a name not only in engineering but also in ballroom dancing! She is now a Chair of  the USA Dance National DanceSport Championships, taking place in Pittsburgh.  

Many thanks for the extraordinary experience!

The Robustness of Global Supply Chains and the Disasters in Japan

The New York Times has some very timely coverage of the immediate and more speculative impact on global supply chains post the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear set of disasters in Japan. The article, "Stress Test for the Global Supply Chain," begins with a very vivid account of an H.P. VP of Operations, Tony Prophet, being awaken at 3:30AM and then proceeding to triage, as in an emergency room, the potential impacts of this triple disaster on H.P.'s global supply chain. Mr. Prophet oversees all hardware purchasing for H.P.’s $65-billion-a-year global supply chain, which feeds its huge manufacturing engine. Its factories produce two personal computers a second, two printers a second and one data-center computer every 15 seconds.

Japan, as the world's third largest economy, is a key supplier of automobile components (as well as automobiles), high tech products, including integrated chips, and even raw materials such as resins that are used in integrated circuit packaging. Factories that were affected by the triple disaster are shut down in Japan creating cascading failures across the globe with GM even closing one of its manufacturing plants in Louisiana. Not only has manufacturing been disrupted but with so many of the roads impassable, not to mention ports being damaged, the transportation of goods has come to a standstill in parts of Japan. Areas where there is radiation danger with radii of 20 miles to as far as 50 miles have taken on a moon landscape of inactivity since those who have not evacuated have been told to stay indoors.

In 2009, we contributed the chapter, Modeling of Supply Chain Risk Under Disruptions with Performance Measurement and Robustness Analysis, co-authored with Professors Qiang Qiang and June Dong, to the book, Managing Supply Chain Risk and Vulnerability: Tools and Methods for Supply Chain Decision Makers, T. Wu and J. Blackhurst, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2009) pp 91-111. This study shows how to assess, a priori, a supply chain's vulnerability from a system and robustness perspective.The model formulation captures supply-side risk as well as demand-side risk, along with uncertainty in transportation and other costs. The model also incorporates the individual attitudes towards disruption risks among the manufacturers and the retailers, with the demands for the product associated with the retailers being random. We also proposed a weighted supply chain performance and robustness measure based on our recently derived network performance / efficiency measure and provide supply chain examples along with the robustness analyses. This work extends previous supply chain research by capturing supply-side disruption risks, transportation and other cost risks, and demand-side uncertainty within an integrated modeling and robustness analysis framework.

Of course, it is not only complex corporate supply chains that are now being impacted but humanitarian ones have also been deeply affected since the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has limited the arrival of necessary supplies to those in need who have not been able to evacuate. Japan has a large elderly population and their suffering is horrific. Humanitarian supply chains are different from corporate ones, since the underlying objectives in managing each of them are clearly distinct. One cannot engage in profit-maximization in the case of humanitarian operations and time is often of the essence. Hence, to assess the performance of humanitarian supply chains, Professor Qiang and I have constructed, A Bi-Criteria Measure to Assess Supply Chain Network Performance for Critical Needs Under Capacity and Demand Disruptions.

As researchers and scholars, we hope that we can assist, in a small but concrete way, through our work.