Abstract: An Overarching View of Operational Failures
One of my current research streams examines operational failures, specifically, how and why operationally excellent firms experience operational failures.
One of the most tractable examples of an operational failure is a product recall, a special focus of my research.
In this seminar, I will share my research on product recalls through a series of published and working papers, and focus on organizational, operational, and managerial drivers of product recalls, and mechanisms that reduce them, with a specific focus on the role of federal inspections.
The set of papers span diverse industry settings, including automotive, medical device and pharmaceutical industries, and healthcare delivery in hospitals and nursing homes.
The audience will learn about many different data sources that are publicly available and diverse econometric methods that are well suited to empirical and analytical research.
The results have theoretical, practical and policy implications and are being used by the FDA and Fortune 500 companies to redesign the production and recall processes.
Speaker Bio
Rachna Shah is a Professor of Supply Chain and Operations Department at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
Rachna received her PhD in Management Science, and an MBA/MHA in Finance from Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University.
Her undergraduate degrees are in Economics and mathematics/statistics from Delhi University, New Delhi, India.
Professor Shah uses ‘lean’ lens to examine how firms achieve operational excellence.
She also investigates why firms experience failures such as product recalls.
Her research has received many prestigious awards and is used by the US Federal Drug Agency and Fortune 500 companies to improve their processes.