Dr Manish Shukla

Profile

Academia is a unique place which provides you an opportunity to explore your ideas, provides you resources and finances for the same and an eco-system of experts to learn and share. I consider myself very fortunate to be working at Leeds University Business School (LUBS) as an Associate Professor of Operations Management and Programme Director of MSc Global Supply Chain Management. This provides me an opportunity to work and collaborate with world leading scientists in agri-food and sustainability, an area where I want to become a world-leading specialist by utilising my qualification, hands-on experience, and in-depth industry exposure of end-to-end agri-food value chains. I was also very fortunate in the past that I got opportunities to work at world leading research institutions like Durham University Business School (DUBS), MIT Global SCALE (Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence) Network, and SC Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. 
My research journey started from an OR Lab in NIFFT Ranchi as an Undergrad student, where I got the first exposure of using AI-algorithms to address NP problems and my first international publication in IJPR. I owe my wider understanding of research methodologies to the Fellow Programme in Management (Doctoral Degree) at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK), India. This is where I learnt beyond Operations and mathematical modelling and explored other tools like empirical, case-study and simulations. IIMK honed my skills and also positioned me as an internal researcher with publications in 4* journals like International Journal of Operations & Production Management (IJOPM) and awards by a number of reputed international organizations such as Fulbright Fellowship, “Tejeshwar Singh Memorial Fellowship” by SAGE Publications, Highly Commended for the Emerald/AIMA Indian Management Research Fund Award by Emerald Publications, Emerging Economies Doctoral Student Award from the Production and Operations Management Society, USA, etc. I have developed several collaborations nationally and internationally over the year and was fortunate to publish papers in prestigious 4* and 3* international journals. Also was able to get support and funding from public and private organisations for my research. 
 

Responsibilities

• Programme Director: MSc Global Supply Chain Management

Research interests

My research interest is in addressing real-life challenges that are causing major societal challenges and need an urgent solution. While addressing a pressing real-life challenge makes it difficult, it also makes it fun. Most of my research can be categorised as either agri-food or sustainability or an overlap of agri-food and sustainability. As a trained operations management researcher with interest in technology-innovation, I try to address these two-topic using the tools and techniques from Operations, Technology, and Innovation. 

I got seriously attracted to agri-food research when Onion prices in India sudden surged multiple times and as a result several governments were voted out. This was a huge phenomenon, as everybody was and still is clueless about the real reasons while blaming the weather, middlemen, infrastructure, exports, etc. I worked on several areas related to Onions, including demand forecasting, inventory management, transportation planning, and supply chain structure. I am also working on some interesting topic in this area.  

I got an opportunity to work with P&G in Malaysia when they were accused by Greenpeace of creating deforestation for Palm Oil. I started studying the end-to-end Palm oil supply chain, players, plantations, deforestations, and the complex supply chain dynamics. A lot of my research related to sustainability, supply risk, reputation risk, certification, etc. is derived from this exposure and subsequent work with other projects and companies. 

I have worked with large international organizations, Government bodies, SMEs and other Organizations for key projects. I have led a number of projects as Principle/ Co-Principle Investigator, where I engaged and learnt from several external stakeholder such as organizations, government officials, farmers, SMEs, etc. I have developed international collaborations with global teams of researchers and professionals to address pressing concerns in complex agribusiness systems. Luckily, I was able to get few organizations interested in my research and to provide me funding including ESRC, N8 Agri-food programme, KTP, etc. 
 

Qualifications

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Durham University
• Ph.D. (Fellow Program in Management), Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, India
• B. Tech (Manufacturing Engineering), National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology, India

Student education

I enjoy teaching and see it as an opportunity to reflect on my own understanding and broaden my horizon of the topic. As a teacher, one prepares for everything and beyond about a topic and attempts to answer every possible question. This kind of preparation creates new and better understanding of the topic.
My teaching is guided by my research, where I bring-in several examples, stories, and cases into class based on my research and consulting work with public and private organisations. I use case-study discussions, negotiation exercises, role-play exercises, simulation games to create an atmosphere as close as possible to a real-life situation. Several of these teaching-tools are generated from my own research so they provide a very realistic and unique learning opportunity to the students, which is otherwise not possible. Over the years, I have also realised that class-room teaching is guiding my research where some of the topics and idea have emerged from the class discussions. 
I am broadly interested in teaching Operations and Supply Chain Management, Sustainability, Analytics, and Innovation related subjects. Because of my recent exposure, I have also developed some interest in Product Design and Development and New Venture Creation.

I like supervising, including Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral students. Supervision gives an opportunity to explore new ideas and dimension while also training the students with research and project management skills. Most of my supervision is around topics related to Supply Chain, Sustainability, and Innovation.