Dr. M Jenamani, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, My broad area of Interest is E-Business. The specific focus areas include web data analytics and supply chain optimization in the context ICT applications. My interest in web data analytics started with my doctoral work where I modeled user behavior in a website and used it for personalization. During post-doctoral research at I worked in the area of online auctions. After joining in the department of Industrial and systems engineering at IIT, Kharagpur, I aligned my research with that of the department by contributing in the area of supply chain management along with my other interest areas. In summary, my past contributions include developing theories, corresponding implementation and experimental validating wherever possible in the area of 1) Models on human behavior in ecommerce site, 2) Decision support in auction and e-procurement, 3) Decision support in supply chain. Currently, I run a number of projects in the areas such as e-business in general, auction, ICT in supply chain and urban sustainability with a focus on e-governance. The prominent and most recent of them is E-Business Center of Excellence, sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development. Scholars in these projects are working on the topics such as website navigation redesign, evaluating the e-governance site quality, citizen opinion mining, optimal RFID equipment positioning, Multi-attribute reverse auction design, studies on RFID adoption and urban sustainability. My future work includes developing models for web data analysis. Design of recommender System, Web Log Analysis, User Generated Content analysis and Social Network Analysis are the four major pillars in this area. Another area that interests me is about developing models for data streams such as RFID data and sensor data. Both this data sources have become extremely important in tracking and tracing of the supply chain. This is link of my IITKGP Profile.

Prof S P Sarmah, Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, My research work is mainly related to the areas of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Inventory Management, Reverse Logistics. Most of my research contributions in these areas are the development of novel mathematical/analytical models capturing the real life situation to draw meaningful managerial insights. My specific research contributions in supply chain is in the area of supply chain coordination and risk management. Some of the contributions in this area are (i) Use of credit option as contract mechanism to coordinate between different members of supply chain and sharing of profit between the members. (ii) Establishment of theoretical model and validation through empirical study of disintermediation of intermediaries in Indian tea supply chain (iii) Development of decision support model for the determination of optimum number of suppliers and order quantity allocation under disruptive events in a supply chain. (iv) Measurement of suppliers’ satisfaction about the buying organization’s performance. In the area of inventory management, my specific contribution is in spare parts inventory management. Application of data mining technique for the development of spare parts inventory management policy is a novel contribution in this direction of research. Currently my research focus is in the development of eco-friendly logistics systems, logistics management of Indian trucking industry and management of city logistics. Research work related to logistics issues of waste management is also currently going on. Future research interests inclined to data driven management of supply chains of different areas. Numbers of industry relevant projects related to Distribution Logistics and Supply chain are also going on in the Logistics System Laboratory developed from the support of MHRD, Govt India. Along with the theoretical research, application of research idea is implemented in Industry through industry consultancy projects at Neyvelie Lignite Corporation Limited, Tamilnadu; Indian Ordnance Factory and other industries. link of my IITKGP Profile.