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Seminars

Two (New) Research Topics in Retail Operations

Date: 04-24-2007
Start Time: 1:00pm
End Time: 2:00pm
Speaker: Ananth Raman, Harvard Business School
Location: Uris 333

ABSTRACT

This seminar will discuss two areas in retail operations that merit further research. First, I will discuss findings relating to inventory record inaccuracy and misplaced SKUs in retail stores. I will summarize current research on the topic. In the second half of the seminar, I will examine how some recent papers are deriving operational insights (e.g., pertaining to inventory turns) based on public financial data.

Two Recent Working Papers on this topic are:

Incorporating Price and Inventory Endogeneity in Firm-Level Sales Forecasting
Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 07-056, Saravanan Kesavan, Vishal Gaur, and Ananth Raman.

Inventory Record Inaccuracy: An Empirical Analysis, Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman.

BIO

Ananth Raman, Professor in the Technology and Operations Management area, specializes in supply chain management. He currently teaches an MBA elective course titled “Coordinating and Managing Supply Chains.” He teaches in multiple executive education courses, and is faculty chair for an executive course titled “Managing the Supply Chain: The General Manager’s Perspective.” He is also actively involved in guiding multiple doctoral students at Harvard Business School.

His research focuses on supply chain management emphasizes production and inventory planning, the role of incentives, and supply chain execution. He is co-director (with Marshall Fisher of the Wharton School) of the Consortium for Operational Excellence in Retailing, a research group that involves academics from numerous universities and leading retailers from around the world.

Raman’s research has been published in many leading journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. Professor Raman has also authored multiple Harvard Business School case studies on supply chain management issues.

He has consulted with, and been responsible for management education programs for executives at, a number of companies, and has also helped multiple retailers and suppliers design and develop decision-support systems for supply chain management.  He is co-founder and director of 4R Systems, a venture-backed startup company.