Yao Zhao

1 Washington Street · Newark, NJ 07102 · (973) 353-5017 · yaozhao@business.rutgers.edu

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

Supply Chain / Project Management Interfaces

Inventory management, project management, outsourcing and collaboration, development chain management
  • Song, J.M., Y. Zhao. 2021. Supply Chain Coordination for E-Commerce: Risk Penalty vs. Flat Rate. Forthcoming at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
  • Song, J.M., Y. Zhao, X. Xu. 2021. Incentives and Gaming in Collaborative Projects under the Risk Sharing Partnership. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 23 (2): 453-470.
  • Choi, S., A. Ruszczynski, Y. Zhao. 2011. A Multi-Product Risk Averse Newsvendor with Law-invariant Coherent Measures of Risk. Operations Research 59: 346-364.
  • Lu, Y., J.S. Song, Y. Zhao. 2010. Non-holdback Allocation Rules in Assemble-to-Order Systems. Operations Research 58: 691-705.
  • Zhang, X. L., Y. Zhao. 2010. The Impact of External Demand Information on Parallel Supply Chains with Interacting Demand. Production and Operations Management 19: 463-479.
  • Song, J.S., Y. Zhao. 2009. The Value of Component Commonality in a Dynamic Inventory System with Lead Times. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 11: 493-508.
  • Zhao, Y. 2008. Evaluation and Optimization of Installation Base-Stock Policies in Supply Chains with Compound Poisson Demand. Operations Research 56: 437-452.
  • Zhao, Y., D. Simchi-Levi. 2006. Performance Analysis and Evaluation of Assemble-to-Order Systems with Stochastic Sequential Lead-times. Operations Research 54: 706-724.
  • Simchi-Levi, D., Y. Zhao. 2005. Safety Stock Positioning in Supply Chains with Stochastic Lead-times. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 7: 295-318.

Socially Responsible Operations

Energy / Water / Agriculture Supply Chains
  • Mun, K.G., Y. Zhao, R. Rafique 2021. Designing Hydro Supply Chains for Energy, Food and Flood. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 23 (2): 274-293. Best theoretical research paper, 22nd Asian Pacific Decision Science Institute (APDSI) Conference, Seoul, Republic of Korea. July 21-25, 2017. ENRE Early-Career Best Paper Award 2019 INFORMS.
  • Shi, J., Y. Zhao, R.K. Kiwanuka, A. Chang. 2019. Optimal Selling Policies for Farmer Cooperatives. Production and Operations Management 28 (12): 3060-3080.
  • Rafique, R., K.G. Mun, Y. Zhao. 2017. Designing Energy Supply Chains: Dynamic Models for Energy Security and Economic Prosperity. Production and Operations Management 26 (6): 1120–1141.
  • Johnson, A., X. Xu, Y. Zhao. 2016. Transportation Planning and Scheduling for the 2014 Special Olympics Games. Interfaces 46 (3): 218 – 230.

Healthcare Analytics

Pharmaceuticals, medical decisions, population health.
  • Ninh, A., B. Melamed, Y. Zhao. 2020. Analysis and Optimization of Recruitment Stocking Problems. Annals of Operations Research 295: 747–767.
  • Khan, A.J., R. Rafique, W. Zafar, C. Shah, B.G. Haffty, A. Jamshed, Y. Zhao. 2017. Nation-Scale Adoption of Shorter Breast Radiotherapy Schedules Can Increase Survival By Improving Access in Resource Constrained Economies: Results from a Markov Chain Analysis. International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics 97 (2): 287-295.
  • Zhao, Y., N. Liu, Y. Wang, K. T. Hickey. 2015. A Rolling-horizon Pharmaco-Kinetic Pharmaco-Dynamic model for warfarin inpatients in transient clinical states. Personalized Medicine 13: 21-32.
  • Fleischhacker, A., A. Ninh, Y. Zhao. 2014. Inventory Positioning in Clinical Trial Supply Chains. Production and Operations Management 24: 991-1011.
  • Fleischhacker, A., Y. Zhao. 2013. Balancing Learning and Economies of Scale for Adaptive Clinical Trials. Operations Research for Health Care 2: 42-51.

Media Coverage and Applied Research

Business Intelligence, Supply Chain Analytics.

Teaching and Service

Courses Taught
  • 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

University Service
  • 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

Professional Service
  • 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).

Module 1: Introduction to Supply Chain Analytics

Teaching objectives:
  • Supply chain analytics impact.
  • Job outlook.
  • Dream job analytics.
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 2: Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking

Teaching objectives: Discover problems and opportunities for companies via data analysis.
  • Industry analysis (industry trend, competition intensity, value chain analysis) to assess industry potential and risk.
  • Competition positioning (profit frontier, enterprise ranking, KPI examination) to position a company in the competitive landscape.
  • Enterprise diagnosis (strengths & weaknesses, value driver and breakdown analysis) to discover problems and diagnose causes.
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 3: Forecasting & Planning under Uncertainty

Case study – Pandemic Influenza: Just-in-time vs. just-in-case strategies.
Teaching objectives:
  • Forecasting rare but disastrous events.
  • Decision making under uncertainty (the newsvendor model).
  • Align commerce with public health.
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 4: Distribution Analytics

Case study - VASTA Wireless: Pull vs. Push Distribution Strategies.
Teaching objectives: Integrated (shipping, inventory, warehousing) distribution strategies, store vs. showroom models.
Award: 1st Prize 2014 INFORMS Case Writing Competition.
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 5: Sales & Operations Planning

Case study – Coach Logistics: Distribution Network Design.
Teaching objectives: Production, workforce, transportation planning, logistics network design. Linear / integer programming modeling, solutions and sensitivity analysis.
Cover 6 hours in-class time

Module 6: Inventory Analytics

Teaching objectives:
  • Where to look for inventory problems?
  • What's the strategic importance of inventory and how to diagnose & discover inventory problems?
  • How does inventory drive financials and subsequently the stock market performance?
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 7: Sourcing Analytics

Teaching objectives:
  • Supplier intelligence to explore and select suppliers globally.
  • Bargaining power analysis to measure the leverage & negotiation power.
  • Supplier benchmarking to compare suppliers' pricing, risks and supplying capability.
Cover 2-3 hours in-class time

Module 8: Shortage Gaming and Supply Rationing

Teaching objectives: Shortage gaming (pandic orders, hoarding, Prisoners' Dilemma), supply chain competition, inventory rationing.
Awards: 2021 Decision Sciences Journal of Innovation Education (DSJIE) Best Teaching Brief awards, Finalist – 2019 DSI Instructional Innovation Award.
Cover 3 hours in-class time

Module 9: Supply chain contracts and collaboration

Teaching objectives: Supply chain collaboration via contracts, joint supply chain and marketing decisions, strategic thinking, teamwork, negotiation.
Cover 6-9 hours in-class time

Hunger Chain Simulation

A Competitive Simulation for Teaching Supply Chain Management

...
Summary

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).


Sample Game Trajectory
...

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.


Student Feedback

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.


Presentation, Paper and Teaching Slides

Youtube Video(s)

FloraPark Simulation

A Supply Chain Contracts and Collaboration Simulation

...
Key Lesson

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


Summary

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.


Student Feedback

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."

Presentation, Paper and Youtube Video(s)