Mukesh Kumar

• Bcom, MBA, PhD
• Associate Professor in Operations Management; Head of IRRG at University of Cambridge

In the last few decades, production and procurement of food grain in India have steadily increased, however, storage capacity has not increased proportionally. The government of India (GOI) is establishing the various capacitated silos across the country to bridge this storage capacity gap. This paper presents a novel integrated multi-objective, mu...

Changes in climate conditions are expected to pose significant challenges to the food industry, as it is very likely that they will affect the production of various crops. As a consequence, decisions associated with the sourcing of food items will need to be reconsidered in the years to come. In this paper, we investigate how environmental changes...

In the today's highly competitive global business landscape, customers demand personalised products and responsive distribution systems, hence fuelling the concept of Distributed Manufacturing (DM) as a paradigm that suggests the geographical distribution of manufacturing systems adjacent to the markets to enable 'production on demand'. To this end...

This paper is a first step to understand the role that a smart city with a distributed production system could have in changing the nature and form of supply chain design. Since the end of the Second World War most supply chain systems for manufactured products have been based on “scale economies” and “bigness”; in our paper we challenge this tradi...

Digitalisation has provoked rapid changes in the operational landscape, thus requiring prompt decision-making across end-to-end supply chains. Notwithstanding the fact that technology is the epicentre of digital transformation, more often than not, organisations fail to effectively adopt innovative applications, harness their full potential and rea...

The circular economy concept has gained significant attention in the academic and industrial discourse. Yet, the widespread adoption of circular business models is still outstanding, with a lack of customer acceptance representing a critical barrier. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the potential of digital technologies to expedite th...

This study investigates the relationship between supply chain complexity, operational efficiency, and product safety risk. We consider three different dimensions of supply chain complexity – horizontal, technological, and spatial complexity – and examine their effect on product safety risk, proxied by severe product recalls. We also examine the eff...

Existing literature has made significant contributions to the growth of supply chain resilience (SCRES) research. However, limited guidance exists on evaluating the level of SCRES within the context of cost. This gap is critical as the level of resilience is inherently dependent upon firms financial capabilities. This paper addresses this issue by...

This paper is among the first to focus on how to balance supply chain resilience (SCRES) and cost within the context of novel foods, particularly Alternative Proteins (APs). These supply chains (SCs), continuously evolving, must develop resilience for success amid competition and disruptions. However, the perception that resilience is costly has le...

The study empirically examines whether increased supply chain (SC) flexibility correlates with improvements in an SC's ability to address a firm’s sustainability performance (SP). In addition, we investigate how SC visibility impacts a firm’s SP by way of enhancing SC agility in the model. SC flexibility plays a vital role in SC operations to achie...

This study explores the nature of publicly available data, big data analytics, the knowledge derived from such analytics, and their interconnections in the context of achieving supply chain visibility, traceability and transparency to uncover the blind spots in the end-to-end supply chain. This study conducts a scoping review and evaluates the rele...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical conceptualization of supply chain uncertainty in logistics and transport operations and their interdependence relationships. A study was conducted to investigate the supply chain uncertainty in a logistics context. Three types of supply chain uncertainty are identified. They are people-related u...

Purpose Companies are concerned about the well-being of workers in their supply chains, but conventional audits fail to uncover critical problems. Yet, if the happy worker – productive worker thesis is correct, it would benefit factories in fast-developing countries, particularly China which is key to many global supply chains, to ensure the well-b...

Renewable feedstocks and Industry 4.0 technologies in supply chains could operationalise circular economy and promote sustainable development. This study explores potential supply network configurations utilising microalgae feedstocks, whose bioactive morphology provides promising commercial opportunities, supported by continuous manufacturing tech...

Purpose This paper is motivated by the gap between the extensive academic discussion of industrial resilience and the limited resilience observed in response to large disruptions. Its purpose is to investigate the relationship between the industrial resilience of manufacturing and service operations and the resilience of the supporting financial, l...

Brands and retailers are concerned about the well-being of workers in their supply chains, but conventional audits are not uncovering critical problems. To find out how this situation could be improved, we collected digital diaries from 466 workers in four factories over a year. Using this data, we identified root causes of their work frustration t...

Digitalisation is expected to transform end-to-end supply chain operations by leveraging the technical capabilities of advanced technology applications. Notwithstanding the operations-wise merits associated with the implementation of digital technologies, individually, their combined effect has been overlooked owing to limited real-world evidence....

Purpose: This study aims to access the perception of smallholder coffee farmers on barriers to the adoption of sustainable agriculture practices (SAPs).Methodology: Survey data were obtained through a questionnaire from 122 coffee producers in Nyeri County, the central region of Kenya. Data were subjected to factor analysis using varimax rotation t...

The circular economy aims to decouple economic growth from resource input, waste, and emission output. For circular economy's dissemination, the lack of consumer acceptance for circular business models and the lack of process frameworks for the circular business model innovation that involve the consumer have been identified as critical barriers. D...

The circular economy aims to decouple economic growth from resource input and waste and emission output. For the dissemination of this economic model, the lack of consumer acceptance for circular business models has been identified as a critical barrier. Despite its importance, this issue remains underexplored in academic research. To address this...

The circular economy aims to decouple growth from resource input. While significant scholarly attention has been put on technical solutions behind circular business models, the lack of consumer acceptance for these offers was recognised as a significant barrier in the transition towards the circular economy. Still, this topic remains underexplored....

Digitalisation has provoked rapid changes in the operational landscape, thus requiring prompt decision-making across end-to-end supply chains. Notwithstanding the fact that technology is the epicentre of digital transformation, more often than not, organisations fail to effectively adopt innovative applications, harness their full potential and rea...

This paper examines the barriers to adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) in smallholder coffee farming in Kenya. Previous studies identify several barriers, but there is limited research on where these barriers exist at different stages of the coffee farming operation processes i.e. nurseries for seed germination, planting, growing...

Agrifood demand spikes often necessitate the short-term use of additional workforce. However, emergency restrictions (e.g., limited mobility during Covid-19) can disrupt harvesting operations. Human-robot synergistic systems could be an alternative long-term solution. Our system dynamics model assesses how introducing robots in agriculture can effi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate strategies to manage product recalls where shortages are a critical threat, with impacts such as loss of life. The authors aim to identify key supply chain strategies and opportunities for theoretical advancement by taking a resilience perspective on temporary supply chain design. Design/methodol...

Background The ability of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the food industry (FSMEs) in cultivating resilience against the COVID-19 pandemic is vital food security. However, there is limited supply chain resilience literature to guide FSMEs in overcoming disruptions caused by pandemic. Scope and approach This review aims to provide a broad v...

Purpose Businesses are under pressure to ensure social responsibility in their globalised supply chains. However, conventional factory audits are not providing adequate data about production workers’ well-being. Industry attempts to measure working conditions have shown bias and inconsistency, and there is no consensus on what to measure, or how. W...

Sustainable Development Goals present an opportunity for industries to (re)design their supply chains. It is understood that digital technologies like blockchain can be helpful in achieving certain Sustainable Development Goals linked to livelihoods, food security, and the environment, by identifying issues and implementing interventions in real-ti...

This study contributes to identifying valid barriers and proposes a model to understand the challenges to Industry 4.0 in circular economy to obtain social, economic and environmental benefits in practice. Industry 4.0 and circular economy have a mutual effect in practice. Hence, this study aims to investigate how to impede the challenges of Indust...

While ‘knowledge mobility’ presents significantly different challenges for SMEs and MNCs, it is strongly influenced by two common factors: the type of knowledge to be integrated and the configuration of the operations network. Here, SMEs and MNCs are required to make critical decisions about ‘levels’ of collaboration and knowledge sharing with netw...

Many academics and practitioners have attempted to investigate supply chain performance, which mainly revolve around financial and non-financial (delivery, flexibility, and quality) performance measures along the chain. Some studies have extended the research scope to explore how supply chain collaboration impacts a supply chain' s or a firm' s per...

Designing supply networks enabled by renewable chemical feedstocks presents complexities in terms of undefined markets, multiple intermediate chemical compound options and uncertain chemical conversion pathways. This research addresses this gap by developing a structured approach for designing compound class defined supply chains (SCs) through invo...

This research explores the development of local community-based ‘makerspaces’ as potential scalable forms of redistributed manufacturing (RDM). Makerspaces are rapidly emerging in post-industrial economies and have been identified as a catalyst of local regeneration in urban areas. However, their role in local production systems is limited. There i...

In today's highly competitive global business landscape, customers demand personalised products and responsive distribution systems, hence fuelling the concept of Distributed Manufacturing (DM) as a paradigm that suggests the geographical distribution of manufacturing systems adjacent to the markets enable ‘production on demand’. To this end, the o...

This research investigates principles to design Circular Supply Networks (CSN). We derive key investigative variables employing Industrial Ecology (IE) theory and Supply Network (SN) research to observe impact of product, process, and location attributes on design and assessment of CSNs. We apply a single case study design guided by a research fram...

While there is substantial research about consequences of supply chain complexity on disruption risks, little research focused on the root causes of product recalls. Recall rates in the automotive industry have seen a severe increase in recent years. This research addresses the relations between supply chain design and product recalls in the automo...

This article aims at providing an integrated approach for optimizing quality control in International Manufacturing Networks (IMN) which can be characterized by consisting of numerous plants acting autonomously according to an individual target system. A key challenge is to ensure the overall process quality despite distributed value creation proce...

We develop an approach for the evaluation of interrelated risks that could compromise a pharmaceutical supply chain's ability to serve patients, whereby experts conduct pairwise-comparisons through an online gamification-enabled platform. Risks categorization based on structural modelling elevates their consideration beyond the single instance in w...

This paper aims at providing an integrated approach for optimizing quality control in International Manufacturing Networks (IMN), which can be characterized by consisting of numerous plants acting autonomously according to an individual target system. A key challenge is to ensure the overall process quality despite distributed value creation proces...

Welfare monitoring in Chinese factories has focused on physical working conditions, with workers' overall well-being largely unexplored. The many codes attempting to define basic standards may not reflect workers' priorities. We used digital diaries to deepen our understanding of migrant workers at a factory in Guangzhou. They suggest factors impor...

Shifting supply chains from linear to closed-loop models is an important step towards circular economy. This paper investigates business model innovation for circular supply chains, and proposes that product-service systems (PSS) business models can enhance the circularity of supply chains through value creation in inner circles, circling long and...

In the last few decades, production and procurement of food grain in India have steadily increased, however, storage capacity has not increased proportionally. The government of India (GOI) is establishing the various capacitated silos across the country to bridge this storage capacity gap. This paper presents a novel integrated multi-objective, mu...

The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship of types of supply chain decisions, types of information and types of digital technologies in order to reduce uncertainty in supply chain operations in manufacturing companies. This study has several key findings including that the majority of information is not systematically captured by...

Today’s supply chains (SCs) are more than ever prone to disruptions caused by natural and man-made events with water scarcity identified as one of the highest impact events among these. Leading businesses, understanding that natural resource scarcity (NRS) has become a critical supply chain risk factor, extensively incorporate sustainable water man...

Today's supply chains (SCs) are more than ever prone to disruptions caused by natural and man-made events with water scarcity identified as one of the highest impact events among these. Leading businesses, understanding that natural resource scarcity has become a critical supply chain risk factor, extensively incorporate sustainable water managemen...

While ‘knowledge mobility’ presents significantly different challenges for SMEs and MNCs, it is strongly influenced by two common factors: the type of knowledge to be integrated and the configuration of the operations network. Only by understanding the various types of knowledge and how they - and the configuration profile of the network (Nascent,...

Inclusive Manufacturing is a new paradigm concept, where all parts of the lifecycle of a manufactured product is made accessible to people from all strata of the society, so as to accelerate sustainable development and dignified well-being for all. Inclusive Manufacturing aims at empowering people, especially those who are spatially, temporally, ph...

The aim of this research is to find out how the extant literature on international purchasing and supply management (PSM) covers the elements of capability from the perspective of distance. A priori, we form a framework of capability driving elements and conclude that distance—in its multiple dimensions—is the fundamental management aspect in inter...

This research explores the development of local community-based “makerspaces” as potential scalable forms of redistributed manufacturing (RDM). Makerspaces are rapidly emerging in post-industrial economies and have been identified as a catalyst of local regeneration in urban areas. However, their role in local production systems is limited. There i...

Shifting supply chain architectures from ‘linear’ to ‘circular’ structures is imperative as businesses strive towards a circular economy ideal. Such a transformation requires innovation in the business models with impacts on value propositions, operations and revenue streams. This paper investigates the phenomenon of ‘circularity’ in supply chain o...

The aim of this research is to find out how the extant literature on international purchasing and supply management (PSM) covers the elements of capability from the perspective of distance. A priori, we form a framework of capability driving elements and conclude that distance—in its multiple dimensions—is the fundamental management aspect in inter...

Organisations are challenged with implementing commitments for sustainability within the context of their global value networks. Networks that are increasingly fuelled by mergers and acquisitions (M&As). M&As have a fundamental impact on the product supply chain. In this paper we consider factors that determine how green is the deal? and explore ho...

The aim of this research is to provide a comprehensive decision-making process and a framework for exploring configuration opportunities for commercially viable supply chains (SCs) arising from renewable chemical feedstocks (RCFs), towards delivering value-added intermediates or end-products. To that end, we first introduce an inclusive hierarchica...

This paper investigates environmental sustainability dynamics of an industrial system through a case study on the UK medical technology sector. This paper builds on an industrial system framework involving institutions, specialist firms, value/supply chains and industrial actors. Environmental sustainability dynamics are explored through infrastruc...

Purpose -This paper proposes a novel resource availability assessment for supply chain configuration. This approach involves understanding of both local resource availability and the demand-side implications of supplying global/regional markets as part of a more holistic supply chain design activity incorporating local environmental factors. Design...

This paper investigates environmental sustainability dynamics of an industrial system through a case study on the UK Medical Technology sector. This paper builds on an industrial system framework involving institutions, specialist firms, value/supply chains and industrial actors. Environmental sustainability dynamics are explored through infrastruc...

International manufacturing organizations face the challenge of implementing the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris (COP21) commitments within the context of their global value networks. Networks that are increasingly fuelled by mergers and acquisitions (M&A), which in 2015 hit a record $4.28 trillion in deal value (Dealogic,...

\textbf{Purpose}$ – This paper proposes a novel resource availability assessment for supply chain configuration. This approach involves understanding of both local resource availability and the demand-side implications of supplying global/regional markets as part of a more holistic supply chain design activity incorporating local environmental fact...

This paper is a first step to understand the role that a smart city with a distributed production system could have in changing the nature and form of supply chain design. Since the end of the Second World War, most supply chain systems for manufactured products have been based on ‘scale economies’ and ‘bigness’; in our paper we challenge this trad...

This discussion paper aims to set out the key challenges and opportunities emerging from distributed manufacturing (DM). We begin by describing the concept, available definitions and consider its evolution where recent production technology developments (such as additive and continuous production process technologies), digitization together with in...

Managing risk associated with plant location decisions is a growing concern as companies seek to reassure investors about the robustness of their strategies. However, little attention has been paid to the systematic evaluation of risk associated with new plants. This paper investigates risk management practices in plant investment decisions through...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge of the transformative potential of big data on city-based transport models. The central question guiding this paper is: how could big data transform smart city transport operations? In answering this question the authors present initial results from a Markov study. However the authors also s...

This study presents a novel approach to designing and evaluating ‘last-mile’ solutions – encompassing the social and economic perspectives of key stakeholders. While urban system initiatives have been implemented in practice, theoretical gaps remain at the operational design level. A theoretical framework is developed, based on design criteria iden...

This paper investigates environmental sustainability dynamics of an industrial system through a case study on the UK Medical Technology sector. This paper builds on industrial system framework involving institutions, specialist firms, value/supply chains and industrial actors. Environmental sustainability dynamics are explored through infrastructur...

This paper explores natural capitals (Water, Biodiversity and Eco-system services) in supply chain design from the perspective of water stress. This research builds upon natural capital theory and supply chain configuration analysis approach. Three bodies of literature have been reviewed: water stress, risk management and supply chain. A case study...

This article explores risk management in global industrial investment by identifying linkages and gaps between theories and practices. It identifies opportunities for further development of the field. Three related bodies of literature have been reviewed: risk management, global manufacturing and investment. The review suggests that risk management...

Purpose ‐ This paper presents a novel analysis of the UK food supply chains (FSC) within selected food product categories to reveal the drivers and changing patterns of the UK FSC structures. It demonstrates how the dynamics of different food sectors are changing and how structural changes are affecting the activities of actors within the FSC ‐ an...

This thesis explores risk management practices in global manufacturing investment. It reflects the growing internationalisation of manufacturing and the increasing complexity and fragmentation of manufacturing systems. Issues of risk management have become increasingly important in financial and company governance contexts not least because of grow...

This paper seeks to explore the rationale behind the ‘footprint’ strategies of multinational corporations. The term ‘footprint’ has immediate appeal but initial enquiries reveal that the purposes, processes and terms used to develop ‘footprint’ strategies vary widely. The lack of clear processes and definitions can lead to misunderstandings and mis...

Global manufacturing companies begin their businesses with small operations concentrated in local regions, near to their original markets and supplies of resources. Their businesses became international, by taking the business opportunities presented by globalisation. However, in this globalisation process various markets, operations, processes, te...