PhD Oral Exam - Ali Khabbazian, Information Systems Engineering

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

 In today’s competitive business environment, different organizations are advancing their supply chain network to improving the quality of products and to reduce lead-time and total costs. Supplier risk is defined as “the possibility that a supplier will fail to supply their commitments to buyer company.” Business processes and projects that build trust only on suppliers may face higher risks/ failure/ loss. In some circumstances, businesses decide to mitigate these risks by diversifying their suppliers.

With the complication and globalization of outsourcing in today’s supply chains and from the other side with consideration of optimization techniques such as lean and just-in-time manufacturing for improving efficiency, they all together increased supply chain sensitivity and disruptions to even minor supply disruptions. Although these models facilitated companies to moderate overall costs and grow rapidly into new markets, they also exposed these companies to be at risk of supplier disruption, closing operations, or being acquired for companies. Considering several types of supply disruptions, the most intensive disruptions have a fairly low probability of occurrence with very high severity of impact when they occur, like COVID. While such risks cannot be eliminated, however, its intensity can be reduced.

It’s almost unmanageable to eliminate risk from the supply chain totally. However, businesses can minimize the risk and even eliminate the impact of certain risk events with cautious planning, tools, and processes to expect and manage risk more effectively. Managing risk typically includes three key aspects: Risk Identification, Risk Assessment, and Risk Mitigation. Together these create the views of risk management, and it is important to understand that these elements work together and cannot be separated or eliminated. For instance, in some points, we can identify a risk situation and understand its impact, but if action is necessary and is not occupied, then the resulting impact still happens. Similarly, if we identify damage after it has occurred, then the significance of assessment is only to understand how to avoid it in the future, and the impact of that event is still touched. Consequently, any operational risk management solution must include these three elements.

From several point of views, 2020 states the importance and criticality of the disruptions. As a result of Covid 19, the whole world faced and experienced lockdown, shortage, and disruption in supply chain of variety of industrials like travel, manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, real estate and even retails. There was many discussions and case studies about the affect of agility, lean manufacturing, and innovation of the enterprise and how it can help the companies to be more comparative in business environment. However most business they are neglectful about disruptions failures and necessary actions to face it.