The Research Initiation Award entitled - Understanding Risks and Disruptions in Supply Chains and their Effect on Firm and Supply Chain Performance - has the overall goal to develop strategies for risk management for supply chains to enable organizations and their engineers, decision makers, and technology managers to create more effective strategies and to manage and mitigate risks and disruptions in their supply chains. The specific research objectives are to identify the sources and scope of risks and vulnerabilities in supply chains, and to determine the effects of different sources and scopes of risk on firm and supply chain performance. The educational objectives are to promote interest and motivation of students to study risk management for supply chains, to develop new instructional materials, and to educate the technical community about risk management for supply chains.
The research is innovative in its approach to risk management because it encompasses both the stages and scope of risks and defines and develops a matrix for risk management for supply chains. It is transformative since it provides the first comprehensive view of managing risks and disruptions within supply chains in different industries with respect to the stage and scope of the risks. It facilitates the formation and establishment of an integrative discipline - risk engineering/risk management - based on foundations from engineering, technology, and management. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to collect data and information regarding the nature of risks and disruptions. Based on the review of the literature and identification of key variables, a survey instrument will be developed for the collection of data. In order to re-validate the findings from the survey data, data on the US airline industry will be used.
