Yao Zhao

I am a Professor in Supply Chain Management at Rutgers Business School, and the co-director of Supply Chain Analytics Lab @ Rutgers. I hold a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences in 2002 from Northwestern University.

My research interests lie in supply chain management, analytics and healthcare. I published on leading operations research and management journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (M&SOM), Production and Operations Management, etc., as well as healthcare journals, such as International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, and Personalized Medicine. I served as an associate editor for Operations Research and MSOM.

I was invited to speak at seminars of universities and industry research laboratories, such as Columbia DRO, MIT ORC, Chicago Booth, Northwestern IEMS, Stanford MSE, Michigan Ross, Maryland Smith and IBM Watson. My research was reported by media such as The European Business Review, Aviation Week and Space Technology, International Innovation, and Pharmaceutical Executives. My PhD graduates hold tenured (tenure-track) faculty positions in research universities such as the University of Delaware, the College of William and Mary, and NJIT, as well as quantitative research positions in JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

I taught core operations, supply chain and analytics courses at Rutgers Business School. I also launched a few popular MOOCs on Coursera towards the Supply Chain Analytics Specialization. Modules of my book "Supply Chain Analytics: Cases, Games and Solutions" were adopted by many supply chain management, operations management and analytics programs around the world.

I consulted with companies and government agencies, such as General Motors, Estee Lauder, Verizon, MTA – NY Transit, Special Olympics, Johnson and Johnson, Fannie Mae, Defense Logistics Agency and US Navy, Korean Air-Cargo, Robert Wood Johnson hospitals, and Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan.

My MIT System Design Management webinar on 787 Dreamliner (12/2013) attracted a world-wide attendance of 307 people from 29 countries and 50+ companies or organizations. Our work on Special Olympics shuttle system helped the 2014 USA Games (5000 athelets, 1000 coaches and 11 locations in a 40-mile radius in NJ) to achieve 100% customer satisfaction in transportation with a budget of $600,000. Our work on Pakistan energy crisis proves the ineffectiveness of the government’s then policy and suggests an alternative, which was partially adopted with a significant economic and social impact.

Awards

• 2019-2025 Dean’s Research Professorship.
• 2021 Decision Sciences Journal of Innovation Education (DSJIE) Best Teaching Brief awards.
• 2019 INFORMS ENRE Early-Career Best Paper Award.
• Finalist – 2019 DSI Instructional Innovation Award.
• 2020, 2011 Dean’s Meritorious Research Awards.
• 2016 Dean’s Meritorious Teaching Award.
• 2008-2014 National Science Foundation Career Award on Manufacturing Enterprise Systems.
• 1 ^st Prize - 2014 INFORMS Case Writing Competition.
• 2010 M&SOM Meritorious Service Award.
• Honorable Mention - 2001 Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) Student Paper Competition.

Research

Teaching and Service

• Operations Analysis (MBA, MS core)

  2008 - Present
• Supply Chain Management Strategies (MBA major).

  2002 - 2016
• Supply Chain Analytics (MS core, MBA elective)

  2016 - Present
• Global Procurement and Sourcing Strategies (Undergrad major)

  2018 - Present

• Co-director - Supply Chain Analytics Laboratory at Rutgers.

  2015 - Present
• Academic coordinator - Ph.D. programs in supply chain management.

  2010 - Present
• Founding Co-director - Masters of Science in Supply Chain Analytics.

  2015 - 2016
• Founding Co-director - Master of Science in Healthcare Analytics and Intelligence.

  2015 - 2017

• Associate Editor - Operations Research.

  2012 - 2018
• Associate Editor - Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

  2011 - 2014
• Judge - M&SOM Student Paper Competition.

  2008 - 2016

Supply Chain Analytics: Cases, Games and Solutions

Supply Chain Analytics, that integrates supply chain management with data analytics, is an emerging and exciting area in high demand. This book meets this demand in a unique approach by combining data-driven problem discovery with model-driven problem solving, through powerful database and analysis tools for students to interpret data and generate insights without coding, award winning case studies to earn hands-on experience, and online competitive games to learn by doing.

The book is in multi-media and electronic format ready-to-use for instructors to minimize their preparation time. Instructors can contact me at my email for teaching materials (slides, database, homework assignments and solutions).

Hunger Chain Simulation

A Competitive Simulation for Teaching Supply Chain Management

Shortage gaming, supply chain competition, and supply rationing are important and timely topics in the operations management and supply chain management curricula. They are hard to teach by lecturing but easy to play out. We introduce an online instructional game, the Hunger Chain, a multi-period competitive simulation, to engage the students in the experiential learning of these topics, making learning effective and fun. Using a controlled experiental study, we provide statistical significant evidence to show that the game stimulates and improves students’ learning of panic orders and hoarding (shortage gaming), how one team’s performance depends on others’ actions (supply chain competition), and how limited supplies may be rationed in supply chains to achieve efficiency and/or fairness (supply rationing).

The above game trajectory indicates panic orders (left graph: total order skyrocketed while demand remained stable) and hoarding (right graph: some retailers starved but others had excessive supplies), as we may observe in the real-world.

As of Jan. 9th, 2022, 370+ games were played by 1100+ student teams under the supervision of 50+ instructors in 20+ universities around the world. A text analysis of the 75 feedback from students in response to the question of “What is your most compelling learning from the Hunger Chain simulation?” at two US universities in 2018 and 2020 show the following results:

The top words in the feedback include ‘game’, ‘hunger’, as well as ‘fun’ and ‘like.’ The sentiment analysis of the feedback shows approximately 90% were positive sentiment, and 8% were negative sentiment mainly due to confusions of the game rules.

• 2023 August Workshop Presentation.
• DSJIE Paper.
• Teaching Slides.

• Hunger Chain Simulation - Introduction.
• Hunger Chain Simulation - How to Play.
• Hunger Chain Simulation - Gaming and Discussion.

FloraPark Simulation

A Supply Chain Contracts and Collaboration Simulation

How to collaborate to win the competition against other supply chains while defending yourself against your “worst” enemy: your trading partner?

Intensity competition among supply chains often forces trading partners to collaborate despite their conflict of interests. Supply chain contracts and collaboration are well studied in the academic literature to align the interests but much less conveyed to students and industry professionals for a practical impact. Although the Beer Game captures the bullwhip effect and value of information sharing, it ignores the conflict of interests, such as, price and quantity bargaining, between trading partners. A new game, the FloraPark simulation (“the flower game”), is designed, based on real-life events of the international fresh flower supply chains, for students to learn supply chain contracts and collaboration in multiple supply chains competing in the same market. Students experiment on the push, pull and the advanced purchasing discount contracts to negotiate wholesale prices and quantities to achieve the conflicting objectives between (1) collaboration to beat up other supply chains and (2) bargaining to protect their own interests against their trading partners.

As of Jan. 9th, 2022, 78 games were played by 276 student teams under the supervision of 20+ instructors in half a dozen universities around the world. Sample student feedback in response to the question of "What is your most compelling learning from the FloraPark simulation?" and "What do you like best about this course" is as follows:

• "The best part about the FloraPark simulation was the conflicting motivations between the firms in the supply chain. ...There must be a careful balance between self-interested actions to capture the maximum amount of value from the supply chain and collaboration to compete against the other supply chains."
• "We were critical to each other’s success and our strategy would not work if both of us didn’t participate. Our combined strategy was greater than any individual strategies we could have."
• "The supply chain strategy games in second half of the course [FloraPark] were exceptional learning experience."

• 2023 August Workshop Presentation.
• ITE paper - FloraPark (the Flower Game).
• FloraPark Simulation - The Supply Chain Flower Game.