Volodymyr Babich, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, will present “Linking the Chains: Can Supply Chain Challenges Become Blockchain Opportunities?” during a lunchtime seminar in Kenan Center 204.

While blockchain technology has grown in prominence, its full potential and possible downsides are not fully understood yet, especially in supply chain management applications. After reviewing the essential blockchain technology features, Babich and co-author Georgetown McDonough Professor of Accounting Gilles Hilary explore multiple business and policy aspects. They identify five key strengths, the corresponding five weaknesses, and three research themes of applying blockchain technology to supply chain management. The key strengths are in promoting (1) trust in data, (2) supply chain visibility, (3) data aggregation, (4) decision automation, and (5) system resiliency. The corresponding weaknesses are (1) “garbage in, garbage out” problem (2) lack of privacy, (3) lack of standardization, (4) “black box” effect, and (5) system inefficiency. The three research and applications themes are (1) information, (2) automation, and (3) tokenization. Biabich and Hilary illustrate these themes with examples ranging from classical supply chain management problems to the analysis of new business models spawned by the introduction of blockchain technology to supply chains.

Prior to joining Georgetown University, Babich worked at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He earned his Ph.D. in Operations Research from Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management. He holds M.S. degrees in Management Science and in Mathematics.

Prof. Babich’s research interests are the interface of operations and finance, supply risk management, supply chain management, stochastic modeling, and risk management. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and various university and industry grants. His papers have been published in leading Operations Research, Operations Management, and Industrial Engineering journals. Prof. Babich serves as an associate editor for Management Science, M&SOM, and Naval Research Logistics, and as a senior editor for Production and Operations Management journals. He is an active member of INFORMS and the MSOM society and has served twice as the Chair of the MSOM Special Interest Group on the Interface of Finance, Operations, and Risk Management (iFORM).

Links to papers:

Blockchain and Other Distributed Ledger Technologies in Operations

Distributed Ledgers and Operations: What Operations Management Researchers Should Know About Blockchain Technology

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• Keyword(s):
• blockchain 5
• supply chain 68