Hello. This is Dr. Zhao. I'd like to tell you a short story of myself in Supply Chain Analytics. This is me and my kids. I got my PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from Northwestern University. I was a visiting PhD student at MIT Operations Research Center and a visiting professor at Duke University Fuqua School of Business. I'm currently the Co-director of Rutgers Supply Chain Analytics Lab. My research interests are in supply chain management, analytics, and healthcare. I'm the Dean's Research Professor at Rutgers Business School from 2019-2021. I received the National Science Foundation Career Award in manufacturing enterprise systems from 2008-2013, and the Dean's Meritorious Teaching Award in 2016. I won the first prize of INFORMS Case Writing Competition in year 2014. What I am most proud of, are my PhD students. In the past 16 years, I graduated 12 PhDs originated from different parts of the world. Such as United States, China, Pakistan, Kenya, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Ukraine. Some of them after graduation became tenure-track professors in highly reputable universities, and some others became quantitative researchers in industry, such as financial institutions. Together with my colleagues and my students, I have done many real life projects in Supply Chain Analytics, either with private companies or with government agencies such as demand forecasting and inventory management with General Motors, Estee Lauder, MTA New York transit, and Verizon. Transportation and logistics with Special Olympics and Korean Air-Cargo. Retail operations and pricing with XiaoDingDang T-Mall stores in China. I also did projects in production, planning, and staffing with Estee Lauder, Swiss Miss Hunts, and Overlook hospital. Supply management with Fannie Mae, and finally on supply chain design and risk analysis with Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority and Kenya Coffee Co-operative Exporters. I'd likely elaborate a project where supply chain analytics was critical to success. This is the 2014 Special Olympics USA games held in New Jersey, with some 4,000 athletes and 1,000 coaches competing over seven days in 16 sports. The total budget of the games is $15 million. That may sound like a lot, but actually is very little for events like this. In comparison, the Beijing 2008 Olympics games cost about $44 billion. It builds up completely new facilities such as the bird nest, and water cube. It was a magnificent show. But after the event, the facilities are heavily under-utilized and costed a lot to maintain. Such under-utilization of heavy investment occurred many times. People said that, "Olympics games is perhaps the biggest money down the drain." These pictures show abandoned Olympics facilities shortly after the games. So one key question is, how to run the games successfully without so much waste? With a total budget of $15 million, we cannot build any new facilities, but only to utilize existing ones. The advantage of using existing facilities is the lower cost. However, the disadvantage is that they're not in the same place, but scattered over middle New Jersey to 10 locations in an area of 40-mile radius. Thus, a shuttle system that connects the locations becomes critical to success. I must tell you that it's not an easy job to design and run an effective shuttle system. For instance, in 2015 Los Angeles games had 50 percent more athletes, about four times our budget, found themselves in a transportation chaos. More than 1,000 athletes and coaches had to sleep in a basketball court because of a shortage of buses. The buses were late for six hours in the airport, athletes and the coaches were exhausted. How to get the athletes to the games on time and cost efficiently became the biggest problem. The shuttle system has to transport the athletes and the coaches among their accommodations, venues and sightseeing locations, as well as serve the events such as opening and closing ceremonies, cruise, and the airport pickup and drop-offs. The specific requirements include on-time and on-schedule performance, convenience, meaning short waiting at the bus stops, short traveling time on buses, and reliable for any weather and traffic conditions, easy to follow, and under a budget of $600,000. The hardest part is actually the easy to follow, because we're serving people with intellectual disabilities. If you put these people in the middle of New York City, they will all get lost. Thus, we must design a shuttle system that is not only convenient and cost efficient, but also simple and easy to follow by people with intellectual disabilities. Using Analytics, we did it. We estimated the traffic, then we determined the bus routes for the best convenience and cost efficiency, we also optimized a bus driver schedule. In the end, we designed a shuttle system that is simple and easy to follow, cost efficient, and also convenient. The shuttle system was implemented and achieved a significant social and economic impact. So we had 100 percent on-time performance everywhere, nobody was delayed, and we maintained an average of 20 minutes interval to all venues as planned. So at every stop every 20 minutes, there will be a bus coming by, and we had 100 percent customer satisfaction. Actually, we took polls at bus stops. Finally, we were under the budget. Here is a customer feedback from a coach. "Couldn't have asked for better bus transportation system. Buses were on time, and didn't have to wait." This is exactly what we wanted. This is the feedback from the Game Organizing Committee. "Even though the events didn't result in substantial transportation savings, we were, however, able to streamline the process ensuring athletes with intellectual disability and their coaches were able to make every competition with zero delays."
