Jayashankar M. Swaminathan

• B.Tech, M.S., Ph.D.
• Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Problem definition: A fundamental issue faced by operations management researcher relates to striking the right balance between rigor and relevance in their work. Another important aspect of operations management research relates to influencing and positively impacting businesses and society at large. We constantly struggle to achieve these objecti...

Problem definition: Customer reviews are essential to online marketplaces. However, reviews typically vary; ratings of a product or service are rarely the same. In many service marketplaces, including the ones for solar panel installations, supply-side participants are active. That is, a seller must make a proposal to serve each customer. In such m...

There is a growing interest in the industry around 3D printing. A related phenomenon is personal fabrication (PF) in which a firm sells products' design and lets the customers personalize and manufacture the product using 3D printing services. In this paper, we characterize the market and operational conditions that make PF an attractive operationa...

Many parts of the world are experiencing extreme weather events, energy poverty, food insecurity and lack of access to basic healthcare. Moreover, concerns over socioeconomic, gender and racial inequalities are growing. These socially relevant issues are ripe for analysis and improvement using an operations management lens. In this paper, we review...

Blockchain is a decentralized digital record of transactions that records information permanently with verification. In supply chain applications, a transaction could be any processing or movement of raw materials, components, or final products, from the source to the ultimate customer. In our research, we found that enhancing supply chain traceabi...

Electricity end-users have been increasingly generating their own electricity via rooftop solar panels. We study the impact of such distributed renewable energy (DRE) on utility profits and social welfare under net metering, which is a widespread policy in the United States. Utilities have been lobbying against net-metered distributed solar based o...

Improvement of agricultural productivity is often regarded as a solution to the impending food shortage problem in the world. In this paper we develop a novel model for seed growth using plant physiology literature and embed that in an optimal seed planting problem for a farmer facing rainfall uncertainty and planting capacity constraints. We estab...

In recent years, natural and man-made disasters have led to nutritional emergencies in many countries around the world, and especially in the Horn of Africa. UNICEF, along with other humanitarian agencies, has adopted the use of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) to alleviate the rapidly deteriorating situation of children in some of the most adv...

Counterfeiting is a severe problem in many sectors. There are two types of counterfeits: non‐deceptive and deceptive. While both types are important business challenge, deceptive counterfeit have an additional negative impact – customers have a post‐purchase regret if they expect to purchase a real product but ended up with a fake. The focus of thi...

This book presents state-of-the-art research on responsible operations practices. The book identifies the challenges and opportunities arising from the shift towards responsible business operations and examines these issues through the lenses of operations management, emphasizing the supply chain transformations associated with these changes. Devel...

Firms increasingly need to manage uncertainty and become more agile and adaptable. This paper considers how a multi‐product firm can use its product mix, resource capacity allocation, and pricing decisions to manage challenges such as structural economic shifts or changes in consumers' willingness‐to‐pay. Firms that seek to develop and use such a p...

Problem definition: We study the optimal seeding policy under rainfall uncertainty in rain-fed agriculture and explore its advantage over commonly used heuristics in practice. Academic/practical relevance: Our work is in the area of agriculture operations, and we focus on the improvement of farmer’s expected total profit by optimizing planting sche...

Warehouse solutions in emerging countries near suppliers have been adopted to achieve cost efficiency in offshore procurement. Previous academic literature ignores logistics operations costs in supply chain contracting. In this paper, we study contracting between a retailer in a developed country and a supplier in an emerging country while incorpor...

Engineers working on tasks in technology‐intensive project environments face substantial task resolution uncertainty. This can result in poor capacity utilization as they expend effort on tasks that are not successfully resolved. A deeper understanding of task‐related uncertainty can help the firm optimize effort allocation across tasks by implemen...

Problem definition: In the U.S. automobile industry, manufacturers distribute products through dealers and rental agencies. To mediate direct competition between the two intermediaries, manufacturers adopted buyback programs to repurchase used rental cars from rental agencies and redistribute them through dealers. We investigate how the timing of b...

Supply chains are often characterized by the presence of a dominant buyer purchasing from a supplier with limited capacity. We study such a situation where a single supplier sells capacity to an established and more powerful buyer and also to a relatively less powerful buyer. The more powerful buyer enjoys the first right to book her capacity requi...

Designing modern call centers requires an understanding of callers’ patience and abandonment behavior. Using a Cox regression analysis, we show that callers’ abandonment behavior may differ based on their contact history, and changes across their different contacts. We control for caller heterogeneity using a two-step grouped-fixed effect method. T...

We consider a manufacturer serving a retailer that sells its product to customers over two periods. Each firm determines its unit price. The retailer orders the product from the manufacturer prior to the beginning of the selling periods. We consider two types of customers: (1) strategic customers who take their future options into account and time...

There has been a significant increase in the scale and scope of humanitarian efforts over the last decade. Humanitarian operations need to be - rapid, impactful, sustained and efficient (RISE). Big data offers many opportunities to enable RISE humanitarian operations. In this paper, we introduce the role of big data in humanitarian settings and dis...

As waste from used electronic products grows steadily, manufacturers face take-back regulations mandating its collection and proper treatment through recycling or remanufacturing. Environmentalists greet such regulation with enthusiasm, but its effect on remanufacturing activity and industry competition remains unclear. We research these questions...

In humanitarian operations, the amount of funding received and the timing and predictability of funding strongly influence program performance. In this paper, we study the problem of allocating inventory procured using donor funding to patients in different health states over a finite horizon with the objective of minimizing the number of disease-a...

We study how retailers can time their service investments when demand for a product is uncertain and consumers care both about price and service when choosing which retailer to buy from. By “service” we mean activities a retailer can invest in and which can drive traffic into the store. We consider offering extended operating hours as an example of...

Supply chain management is a critical aspect of conducting any business. In this article, we provide an overview of the advancements in supply chain management. In the initial section, we present alternative definitions and key issues related to supply chain management followed by a discussion of complexities associated with managing supply chains....

In the last two decades, many countries have enacted product take-back legislation that holds manufacturers responsible for the collection and environmentally sound treatment of end-of-use products. In an industry regulated by such legislation, we consider a manufacturer that also sells remanufactured products under its brand name. Using a stylized...

Funding for humanitarian operations in the global health sector is highly variable and unpredictable. We study the problem of managing inventory in the presence of funding constraints over a finite planning period. Our goal is to determine the optimal procurement policy given the complexities associated with funding and also to analyze the impact o...

In this paper we use hourly data on store traffic, sales, and labor from 41 stores of a large retail chain to identify the extent of understaffing in retail stores and quantify its impact on sales and profitability. Using an empirical model motivated from queueing theory, we calculate the benchmark staffing level for each store, and establish the p...

There is a growing trend in the retail industry to improve customer experience. In this article, we study retailer‐initiated strategies to increase consumer valuation for a product under duopoly. In such a setting, it is possible that a consumer's valuation may be increased by one retailer; however, the consumer may decide to buy the product from t...

We examine the role of knowledge diversity among unit members on an organizational unit's productivity. Utilizing a proprietary data set of corrective maintenance tasks from a large software-services firm, we investigate the impact of two key within-unit diversity metrics: interpersonal diversity and intrapersonal diversity. We analyze the independ...

We study a multi-product firm with limited capacity where the products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the customer base is heterogeneous in their valuation of quality. While the demand structure creates opportunities through proliferation, the firm should avoid cannibalization between its own products. Moreover, the oligopolistic marke...

As emerging markets increasingly rely on service businesses through offshore outsourcing, we examine the role of governance control mechanisms in improving performance among business process outsourcing (BPO) service providers in India. Using data collected from 205 emerging market-based BPO service providers in India, we examine the antecedents an...

Supply chain management is a critical aspect of conducting any business. In this article, an overview of the advancements in supply chain management is presented. In the initial section, alternative definitions and key issues related to supply chain management are presented followed by a discussion of complexities associated with managing supply ch...

Take-back legislation holds producers financially responsible for handling and treating their products at end of life. A growing number of countries around the world have enacted such legislation, especially for electrical and electronic products. Clearly, such legislation impacts the strategic and operational decisions of companies operating in th...

Attracting shoppers to stores and converting the incoming traffic into sales profitably are vital for the financial health of retailers. In this paper, we use proprietary data pertaining to an apparel retailer to study the relationship between store traffic, labor, and sales performance. We decompose sales volume into conversion rate (defined as th...

Product line choice is an important factor in determining the overall success of a manufacturer operating in a customer-oriented competitive market. A broader product line offers greater variety and caters to multiple segments of the market. This enables a manufacturer to meet customer needs more closely leading to higher market share and greater r...

In this research note, we investigate segmentation opportunities for social planners such as government agencies, nonprofits, and public organizations. These opportunities arise when the potential products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences toward quality. In these cases, whether to offe...

As service processes become candidates for outsourcing, interest in the global business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has grown considerably. In this study, drawing on information processing theory, we examine the role of integration in BPO and its effect on BPO firm performance. BPO Integration is concerned with the overall coordination of bu...

A retailer needs to make decisions regarding how much to order and how much sales effort to exert in an environment with uncertain demand. One intrinsic complexity in a typical retail environment is caused by the fact that the retailer can obtain information about demand only based on sales, as demand itself is unobservable. Taking a Bayesian appro...

Mass customization aims to provide individually customized products with near mass production efficiency. We give examples of different types of mass customization. We then discuss the benefits that make mass customization attractive. This includes ability to charge price premiums, stronger relations with customers, better market understanding, and...

We study a firm that makes new products in the first period and uses returned cores to make remanufactured products (along with new products) in future periods. The remanufactured product is differentiated from the new product, so the firm needs to choose differentiated prices. We analyze the monopoly environment in two-period, multi-period (three,...

We examine the drivers of project performance and customer satisfaction in outsourced software projects using a proprietary panel dataset. The data cover 822 customer observations related to 182 unique projects executed by an India-based software services vendor. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, we investigate how project planning, team st...

Specialization at work has been recognized as a key driver of learning and productivity since the days of Adam Smith. More recently, researchers have noted that exposure to task variety can enhance learning. We examine how exposure to specialization and variety jointly drive employee productivity in a real-life setting. We analyze a data set coveri...

Misplaced inventory is a major operational problem in many supply chains. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been publicized as a promising solution for the misplaced inventory. Adoption of this technology has a fixed cost and variable cost of implementation, which can cause incentive issues in the supply chain. In this paper, we...

In this paper we study the optimal pricing strategies when a product is sold on two channels such as the Internet and a traditional channel. We assume a stylized deterministic demand model where the demand on a channel depends on prices, degree of substitution across channels and the overall market potential. We first study four prevalent pricing s...

Recent advances in information technology make it possible for decision makers to track information in real-time and obtain frequent feedback on their decisions. From a normative sense, an increase in the frequency of feedback and the ability to make changes should lead to enhanced performance as decision makers are able to respond more quickly to...

India's prominence in the global economy is on the rise. Are we witnessing the rise of an economic superpower? Or is it a mirage? What factors have influenced this economic growth story across the different sectors? Which sectors present future growth potential? How can this opportunity be leveraged?In this volume, leading experts and scholars pres...

As the clear blue waves from the Arabian Sea splashed on the walls of Fort Aguarda, which had been turned into a nice five-star hotel, the bollywood music from the beach boy's transistor brought me to the realization that I was indeed in India. This was the summer of 2004, and I was in Goa with 25 MBA students from the Kenan-Flagler Business School...

A couple of years ago, as I was watching the “swoosh” of the Nike logo being printed on T-shirts at the Intimate Active Wear factory in Bangalore,a I realized that India had finally joined the global manufacturing network. In fact, textiles make up 14% of India's total industrial production, constituting 4% of its GDP and 17% of its total export ea...

While most of its previous developments have focused on products, services, and infrastructure, India is also beginning to play a major role in healthcare. On a recent business visit to Apollo Hospitals¹ in Delhi, an MBA student commented that she was surprised at the level of healthcare technology available in India. I replied, “Me too.” In 1982,...

In this paper, we study a firm that faces demand from two sources: demand for new items and demand to replace failed items under warranty. We model this setting as a multiperiod single-product inventory problem where the demands for new items in different periods are independent and the demands for replacing failed items depend on the number and ag...

In recent years, globalization of markets and increased consumer sophistication have led to an increase in the variety of products that customers demand and a consequent increase in the number of variants of any given product line that a manufacturer must supply. At the same time, an increasing number of companies have pushed the task of accommodat...

In this article we study a firm that is facing demand from two sources: demand for new items and demand to replace failed items under warranty. We model this setting as a multiperiod single-product inventory problem where the demands for new items in different periods are independent and the demands for replacing failed items depend on the num...

In the last decade, India’s role in the global supply chains has been steadily increasing. A massive population coupled with a large talented workforce have made India attractive both as a market and a source. In this paper, we discuss the pitfalls and opportunities in effectively managing supply chains in India. We discuss topics that would intere...

A brief synopsis of "Boiling Frogs: Pricing Strategies for a Manufacturer Adding a Direct Channel That Competes With the Traditional Channel" (Production and Operations Management, forthcoming) by K. Cattani, H.S. Heese, W. Gilland and J. Swaminathan

Market pressure for low prices paired with customer demand for high product variety presents a considerable dilemma for many manufacturers. Industry practice and research to date suggest that approaches based on component commonality can substantially lower the costs of proliferated product lines, but at the cost of reducing product differentiation...

We analyze a scenario where a manufacturer with a traditional channel partner opens up a direct channel in competition with the traditional channel. We first consider that in order to mitigate channel conflict the manufacturer, who chooses wholesale prices as a Stackelberg leader, commits to setting a direct channel retail price that matches the re...

We study a firm that makes new products in the first period and uses returned cores to offer remanufactured products, along with new products, in future periods. We introduce the monopoly environment in two-period and multiperiod scenarios to identify thresholds in remanufacturing operations. Next, we focus our attention on the duopoly environment...

Recently, innovation-oriented firms have been competing along dimensions other than price, lead time being one such dimension. Increasingly, customers are favoring lead time guarantees as a means to hedge supply chain risks. For a make-to-order environment, we explicitly model the impact of a lead time guarantee on customer demands and production p...

In the 1999 settlement of a lawsuit by the state of California, 19 pharmaceutical firms were required to provide $150 million worth of drugs free of charge to 200 California clinics and hospitals over three years. The Public Health Institute (www.phi.org), an independent, nonprofit organization, was responsible for distributing these drugs in a fai...

In this paper we extend forecast band evolution and capacitated production modelling to the multiperiod demand case. In this model, forecasts of discrete demand for any period are modelled as bands and defined by lower and upper bounds on demand, such that future forecasts lie within the current band. We develop heuristics that utilize knowledge of...

Product variety has been on the increase for the last several years. Firms are striving to identify effective operational strategies to deal with the growth in product variety. Postponement can be a powerful strategy for managing product variety. In this paper, we introduce concepts related to postponement, discuss successful industrial application...

In this paper we consider a single period multi-product inventory problem with stochastic demand, setup cost for production, and one-way product substitution in the downward direction. We model the problem as a two-stage integer stochastic program with recourse where the first stage variables determine which products to produce and how much to prod...

Supply chain management includes the implementation of efficient policies related to procurement of raw material, transforming them into semifinished and finished products and distributing them to the end customer, thereby transcending multiple business units. Poor supply chain management (more often than not) predominantly results in excessive amo...

The Internet has provided traditional manufacturers and retailers a new avenue to conduct their business. On one hand, utilizing the Internet channel potentially could increase the market for the firm and, due to synergies involved, reduce the costs of operations. On the other hand, a new channel threatens existing channel relationships through pos...

This chapter discusses the analytical models for evaluating the postponement alternatives. The chapter introduces the three key postponement enablers: process standardization, process resequencing, and component standardization. The industry applications utilizing these enablers are described. Various other techniques for managing product variety,...

In this paper we present a canonical setting that illustrates the need for explicitly modeling interactions between manufacturing and marketing/sales decisions in a firm. We consider a firm that sells an innovative product with a given market potential. The firm may not be able to meet demand due to capacity constraints. For such firms, we present...

Visteon's remanufacturing facility in Lamosa, Mexico was plagued with heavy fluctuations of supply and demand, leading to periods of severe capacity shortage. Management asked us to assess options for improving capacity. We developed a simulation-based line-configuration model that simultaneously considers line balancing and line length (number of...

upply chain management is likely to play an important role in the digital economy. In this paper, we first describe major issues in traditional supply chain management. Next, we focus our attention on the supply chain issues of visibility, supplier relationships, dis- tribution and pricing, customization, and real-time decision technologies that ha...

We consider an infinite horizon economic order quantity (EOQ) model with single announced price increase, with an option of placing a special order just before the price increase takes effect. We extend earlier work where it is assumed that the special order is an integral multiple of the new EOQ quantity. In the process, we show that when the assu...