Dr. Paul Hong, UT professor of information operations and technology management, served as conference chair of the Fifth Annual International Supply Chain Management Symposium and Workshop, which took place Thursday through Saturday, March 8-10, at the University of Tokyo.
Posing for a photo at the Fifth Annual International Supply Chain Management Symposium and Workshop at the University of Tokyo were, front row, from left, panel members Xiaobo Wu of Zhejiang University, China; Yongjiang Shi of Cambridge University, United Kingdom; Paul Hong, conference chair, University of Toledo; Takahiro Fujimoto, conference chair, University of Tokyo; Mark Vonderembse of UT; Seungchul Kim of Hanyang University, Korea; and Hiroshi Katayama of Waseda University, Japan; and back row, from left, conference organizers GS Shin of Kyunghee University, Korea; Youngwon Park of the University of Tokyo; Junjiro Shintaku of the University of Tokyo; Takashi Shimizu of the University of Tokyo; David Dobrzykowki of UT; and Erika Marsillac of Old Dominion University.
The symposium was organized by The University of Toledo, the University of Tokyo, Instituto de Empresa Business School in Spain, PSG Institute of Management in India and Kyungpook National University in South Korea.
“UT is the founding institution of this annual symposium,” Hong said. “Our faculty have a long history of leadership in the field of supply chain management, and many have been participating in leadership roles in this symposium.”
This year, six faculty members and two doctoral students from the UT College of Business and Innovation organized, attended and presented their research.
UT business faculty who participated in the conference were Dr. Mark Vonderembse, who was a special session panel member; Dr. Sachin Modi and Dr. Udayan Nandkeolyar, who served as session chairs; and Dr. Monideepa Tarafdar and Dr. David Dobrzykowski, who were special journal issue editors.
In addition to the faculty members, doctoral students Ryan Skiver and Vincent Whitelock presented research.
This year’s symposium focused on the complexity and risk in global supply chain management, with a particular emphasis on the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the experiences of companies during and after the natural disasters. One speaker, a top executive at Toyota, talked about the way the automaker handled supply chain disasters in the wake of the tsunami.
The first International Supply Chain Management Symposium and Workshop took place at The University of Toledo in 2007 under the leadership of Dr. Subba Rao, UT professor emeritus of information operations technology management, and Vonderembse. Since that time, a consistent vision has persisted to develop an international research network of leading scholars in the supply chain management field.
Thanks to the support of the UT Transportation Center as well as Dr. William McMillen, UT provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Dr. Thomas Gutteridge, dean of the College of Business and Innovation, the symposium has since rotated through South Korea, India, Spain and Japan.
“The symposium will return to the United States in 2013 with a focus on cutting-edge issues in supply chain management in emerging contexts,” Hong said. “Key topics that are being considered include global automotive supply chain management, financing global supply chains, green supply chain management, and health-care supply chain management. These are important issues facing topic researchers and executives alike.”
Each annual conference is accompanied by special issues of high-quality scholarly journals. The 2012 symposium includes special issues of several journals, including International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, and International Journal of Business Information Systems, for which Hong, Tarafdar and Dobrzykowski worked as guest editors with teams of scholars from America, Japan, Korea and Spain.
“The goal of the symposium is to bring together researchers and leading institutions,” Hong said. “Each year, the participating researchers have used the symposium to make significant strides in research productivity, so it provides value in terms of networking and positively impacting supply chain management theory and practices.”
