Centre for Supply Chain Research
Enhancing business productivity, responsiveness and resilience
The Centre for Supply Chain Research is a forerunner in offering new, technologically innovative and global solutions to supply chain operations and management current and future challenges, to boost business performance and competitiveness.
With strong links to public and private organisations, we promote collaborative research, knowledge exchange and advisory services on current and emerging issues affecting supply chains, logistics, transportation and technology.
If you are interested in what we do, don't hesitate to contact us to discussed potential research projects or join our centre. PhD students are also welcome!
Research themes
We focus on five thematic research and impact pillars.
Transport and logistics
- Modelling and optimisation of problems in the design, planning and operation of transportation networks for the distribution of freight
- Container shipping, empty container/vehicle positioning and ship loading
- Intermodal terminal and seaport terminal management
- Vehicle routing problems in road transportation
- Multi-commodity network design, service network design and facility location
- Last-mile solutions
- Capacity analyses of rail networks and railway timetabling.
Agri-food supply chains
- Food waste reduction
- Food security and sustainability
- Integrating local and global food production systems
- Circular economies and food supply chains
- Inventory and pricing strategies for perishable food supply chains.
Sustainable supply chain management
- Green supply chain management
- Carbon foot-printing of logistics systems
- Environmental policies and operations and supply chain performance
- Sustainable procurement
- Modern slavery and supply chain ethics.
Agile operations
- Organisational agility
- Agile and resilient operations
- Management practices and the performance and productivity of small firms
- Sustainable growth of SMEs.
Supply chain technologies, analytics and risk
- Digital strategies and ICT adoption in operations and supply chain management
- Uncertainty and risk mitigation
- Mathematical programming, stochastic dynamic programming and meta-heuristic optimisation of supply chains
- Development of models and algorithms to support supply chain network design
- Artificial intelligence and blockchain applications
- Machine learning and big data analytics in operations and supply chain management.
PhD Summer School 2026 welcomes researchers from 28 universities
The five-day programme brought together leading international academics to share the latest advances in research methods and emerging topics in operations and supply chain management. Read more.