Tackling the grand challenges of a digital world: Introducing the Centre for Technology, Operations and Supply Chain Analysis (TOSCA)

The modern industrial revolution, sometimes termed Industry 4.0 or 5.0, brings significant challenges and opportunities for businesses and societies all over the world, with digital technologies presenting additional complexity through sheer speed of development. 

Put simply, it’s hard to keep up, let alone stay ahead! 

As a result, organisations often struggle to adopt and assimilate technologies that could optimise their operations and supply chains.  At the same time, emerging technologies also provide new opportunities for businesses to improve their operational performance, so leveraging these technologies effectively is essential.

Additionally, issues such as geo-political instability, climate change and resource disruption continue to challenge supply chain reliability and resilience globally, requiring organisations to ‘do more with less’ whilst operating in environments of persistent uncertainty. 

Like it or not, such grand challenges are here to stay, continuously impacting business, society and our environment. 

New technologies such as generative, predictive and agentic artificial intelligence, additive manufacture, and blockchain all offer tempting solutions, but understanding the root problem isn’t always clear.  Thus, rigorous approaches are required to investigate business and society needs, using multi-disciplinary approaches and purposeful collaboration.

The Centre for Technology, Operations and Supply Chain Analysis (TOSCA) responds precisely to these challenges and opportunities, offering timely insights and expertise across a wide range of industry settings, including private, public and third sector organisations.

What TOSCA offers

TOSCA brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of academic disciplines, including information systems, operations management, operations research, supply chain management, and digital transformation.  It currently hosts approximately 25 core members, 10 PhD students, and a diverse range of associate members.  

It aims to deliver reliable outcomes and meaningful impact through research involving both industry and academic collaborators alike. TOSCA offers this rigorous, inter-disciplinary research at civic, national, and global levels.

TOSCA’s research encompasses three core themes in: i) technology and digitalisation, ii) sustainable supply chains and iii) operations and analytics, all across a range of sectors such as global logistics, policing, healthcare, humanitarian/disaster management, textiles, finance, creative industries, and social housing.

These are characterised as follows:  

Technology and digitalisation

Digital transformation, responsible digitisation, AI human interaction, AI and future of work, information systems, technology and strategy practices, innovation adoption, and ethics.

Sustainable supply chains

Circular economy, climate change, managing supply chain technology, inter-organisational relationships, supply chain resilience, operations management, and performance management

Operations and analytics

Supply chain intelligence, disaster management, healthcare management, humanitarian aid, optimisation, mathematical modelling, and algorithms.

TOSCA’s research is supported through a wide range of funding, from small grants with individual organisations, to knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs), to large government-funded grants and major externally-funded projects involving multiple academic and industry collaborators. 

Impact is an important component of TOSCA’s research activity too, whether that’s improving peoples’ quality of life, strengthening performance outcomes for businesses, or influencing government policy. Some examples demonstrating such impact include our work with Johnson & Johnson, LBBC and the Institute of Collaborative Working.

TOSCA hosts a range of events, from seminars to conferences, and regularly invites internationally renowned speakers to share their ideas, collaborate and support colleagues through mentoring. It hosts an annual Supply Chain Summit which brings together practitioners and collaborators from a wide range of sectors to discuss global supply chain issues. Future events will include round-table discussions and international researcher workshops.

Research-led teaching is at the heart of how TOSCA members design innovative modules for undergraduates and postgraduates alike. Our postgraduate researchers (PGRs) are also core members of TOSCA; strong engagement with TOSCA’s PGR community is deemed critical for building future research capacity and simultaneously sustaining a diverse and inclusive research culture, both of which are essential for sustained future collaboration. 

The future

TOSCA’s launch presents a fantastic opportunity to forge new collaborations with which to tackle modern industrial challenges and opportunities. Whether you’re a small, local SME or a large multinational corporation - across the private, public or third sector - reach out to us (Dr Nicky Shaw and Dr Mahdi Bashiri) to explore what we do and what TOSCA can offer. 

We have bold ambitions and a multitude of ways to connect.

Follow us on LinkedIn or see our website for more information.