PhD Studentship: Agri-Food Sector Supply Chain Resilience

Fully funded 4-year PhD (Years 1 & 4 in Sheffield; years 2 & 3 in Singapore)

Open only to Home Students with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) background in industry or as an undergraduate

Project Objectives

1. To better understand the changing needs of companies in the agri-food sector as they face tensions with Just-in-Time systems in terms of building supply chain resilience, particularly regarding inventory management and forecasting
2. To develop new improved inventory management solutions for the agri-food sector that take into account their unique circumstances (short shelf-lives and quality deterioration over time, and long global supply chains)

Project Description

The recent Covid-19 pandemic caused global supply chain disruptions, with manufacturers worldwide unable to source raw materials or distribute their products to customers. In its aftermath, companies are now more invested in building their supply chain resilience, so as to better weather future unexpected disruptions.

The importance of building supply chain resilience is more acutely felt by the agri-food sector, which frequently faces issues such as short shelf-lives (both in raw materials and finished products) weather disruptions (e.g., sharp price increases of raw materials due to a drought) and supply chain disruptions. For such businesses, even moderate delays can lead to significant amounts of food wastage and monetary loss.

This project aims to determine how best to work with the agri-food sector to improve its supply chain resilience. In particular, it will look at how inventory management practices may be improved, using methods from operations research and machine learning. It is well-aligned to Singapore’s “30 by 30” goal of growing its agri-food industry to sustainably produce 30% of its nutritional needs by 2030 and is important for the UK which is heavily dependent on food imports.

Scope of work to be carried out at SimTech in Singapore

• To engage with agri-food companies in Singapore to understand their unique needs and requirements
• To undertake research on improving inventory control for the agri-food sector

Scope of work to be carried out in Sheffield

• To continue to engage with the agri-food sector key players in the UK to understand their unique needs and requirements in response to supply chain disruptions
• To undertake research on improving resilience across the agri-food sector’s supply chain

Outcomes

To help the agri-food sector cope with supply chain disruption though enhanced inventory control and forecasting which would increase the resilience of the sector.

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