Supply Chain Focus – speakers: Professor Heather Skipworth and Dr Lorenzo Prataviera – Cranfield University – 6th December 2023

In this episode our Network Development Manager, Tracy Grazioli brings our fantastic speakers:  Professor Heather Skipworth who has lead Cranfield’s very successful Agile Supply Chain Research Club for over a decade. She presented on Risks in Supply Chains, and the Club on how they support businesses. In a similar vein, Dr. Lorenzo Prataviera who leads on MSc projects provided a very brief presentation on how they can support (for free) manufacturers via MSc projects to the SMA Members.

Additional Background on our speakers

Dr Heather Skipworth is an Associate Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at Cranfield School of Management, where she is also Director of the Agile Supply Chain Research Club, which provides a collaborative forum where member companies can share promising supply chain practices and participate in Cranfield University research. She works with companies from a range of sectors, including Automotive, fast moving consumer goods, logistics services and defence to produce research findings, which are highly relevant to supply chain management practice.  Her specific areas of research interest include agile and responsive supply chains and supply chain risk and resilience and she has published her findings in leading journals including International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal of Production Research. Heather is the lead author on a key logistics text influencing academics and practitioners entitled “Logistics Management and Strategy” (edition 6, 2019), which is ranked as one of the top ten supply chain books of all time on www.supplychainopz.com.  She teaches on the MSc in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and MBA programme leading modules on Supply Chain Strategy and Sales and Operations Planning.  Prior to her academic career she worked in the manufacturing sector where she gained valuable insights into the challenges faced in practice.

Lorenzo Bruno Prataviera holds a PhD in Management, Economics, and Industrial Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), with a doctoral dissertation entitled “Towards a new Approach for Global Distribution Network Design: the Integration of Logistics and Fiscal Issues”. Before joining Cranfield University School of of Management in September 2021, he has been lecturing and undertaking research on logistics, supply chain management and industrial engineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) since May 2016.  From September 2018 to February 2019 he also held a position as Guest Researcher at Lund University (Sweden). His main research interests are in the field of global distribution network design, taking a multidisciplinary attitude to go beyond conventional logistics boundaries and enlarge the adopted perspective. Lorenzo is currently working on developing the interface between the logistics and fiscal domains, and investigating sustainability issues for global network design.  Alongside these main activities, further research is conducted concerning supply chain collaboration, supply chain resilience, start-up-driven innovation in the logistics industry, and a widespread investigation of the logistics outsourcing industry Global distribution network design:

–   Postponement and the postponement boundary problem

–   Logistics outsourcing

–   Supply chain collaboration

–   Supply chain resilience

–   Green logistics and green supply chain management

–   Supply chain finance