Sunil Chopra

About

Sunil Chopra is the IBM Distinguished Professor of Operations Management at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has served as Interim Dean of the Kellogg School of Management from 2009 to 2010 and was the Senior Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching from 2006 to 2009. Professor Chopra joined the Kellogg faculty in 1989 and previously held an Assistant Professor position at the Stern School of Business Administration at New York University. He holds a PhD in Operations Research from SUNY Stony Brook. His research and teaching interests are in Operations Management, Logistics and Distribution Management, design of communication networks, and design of distribution networks. He has co-authored books on Managing Business Process Flows and Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Planning, and Operation, which are used in top business schools and have received awards such as the best book of the year in 2002 by the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Professor Chopra has received several teaching awards at Kellogg and has held editorial positions in prominent journals including Management Science and Operations Research. His recent research focuses on risk management in supply chains and analyzing distribution systems to identify market, manufacturing, and product characteristics that influence supply chain structure. He has also consulted for various firms in his areas of expertise.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Marketing
• Business
• Mathematics
• Computer network
• Environmental economics
• Mathematical optimization
• Transport engineering
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Achieving supply chain efficiency and resilience by using multi‐level commons

  Decision Sciences · 2021 · 126 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We offer the notion of “commons” at different levels—within company, private across company, and government‐sponsored across‐industry sectors—and discuss how the creation of such commons enabled firms to be both efficient during normal times and resilient against the disruptions resulting from COVID‐19. At the same time, there are many proven strategies providing resilience in supply chains. For instance, companies that used multiple channels to improve efficiency when facing day‐to‐day…

  PublisherDOI

• Mitigating Product Shortage Due to Disruptions in Multi‐Stage Supply Chains

  Production and Operations Management · 2020 · 67 citations

  We focus on the optimal use of risk mitigation inventory (RMI) and reserve capacity to manage disruption risk in serial multi‐stage supply chains where product transformation occurs at each stage. We find that under reasonable conditions it is better to hold more RMI downstream than upstream even when the upstream holding costs are lower. We also find that it is often optimal to hold more reserve capacity downstream than upstream. While in one‐stage supply chains RMI and reserve capacity always…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Bounded Formulation for The School Bus Scheduling Problem

  Transportation Science · 2022 · 18 citations

  This paper proposes a new formulation for the school bus scheduling problem (SBSP), which optimizes school start times and bus operation times to minimize transportation cost. The goal is to minimize the number of buses to serve all bus routes such that each route arrives in a time window before school starts. We show that introducing context-specific features, common in many school districts, can lead to a new time-indexed integer linear programming (ILP) formulation. Based on a strengthened ve…

  PublisherDOI

• Lean manufacturing implementation in regions with scarce resources

  Management Decision · 2019-12-13 · 12 citations

  article

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of lean practices by manufacturing companies in regions of low economic and technological development and to compare findings with previous studies from more developed regions highlighting important contextual differences. The paper uses the contingency theory to explore how contextual variables and scarce resources influence the adoption of lean practices. Design/methodology/approach A survey of 233 manufacturing firms was conducted i…

  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of Tightening Standards on Automakers’ Non‐compliance

  Production and Operations Management · 2021-03-29 · 11 citations

  article

  This study investigates how tightening standards can result in greater non‐compliance, especially when market and regulatory interests are misaligned. We confirm a causal relationship that explains the highly publicized auto industry non‐compliance phenomenon where on‐road NOx emissions exceeded standards. Based on a 15‐year on‐road vehicle emissions dataset covering 148,837 vehicles from 42 automakers in the EU, we use regression discontinuity to identify the causal impact of standards tighteni…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• ManMohan S. Sodhi

  12 shared

• Sangho Shim

  Robert Morris University

  12 shared

• M. R. Rao

  11 shared

• Achal Bassamboo

  10 shared

• Karen Smilowitz

  10 shared

• Florian Lücker

  9 shared

• Peter Meindl

  Wake Forest University

  8 shared

• Mark S. Daskin

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• Saul Gass Expository Writing Award, INFORMS Annual Meeting,…
• Winner Case Category - Indian Management issues and Opportun…
• Kellogg Alumni Professor of the Year Award, Kellogg School o…
• Selected IIE Book of the Year for Supply Chain Management, I…
• Executive MBA Program Outstanding Teaching Awards, Kellogg S…

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