UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A research paper written by Dongsheng Li, a doctoral candidate in the Penn State Smeal College of Business Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems, was selected as a finalist in the Sixth Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Applied Research Challenge 2024.
The biennial competition was established in 2012 as a way to encourage members — both faculty and students — of the international POMS to conduct rigorous applied research that is innovative and relevant to practice.
“This is an important recognition of Dongsheng’s research balancing rigor and relevance — a key objective of our department’s Ph.D. program,” said Dan Guide, Smeal Chaired Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and the doctoral program coordinator for the Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems. “We partner with our Center for Supply Chain Research to identity problems faced by our industrial partners that are very difficult to solve. Industry doesn’t have the capacity/expertise to devote to these unique situations that are not well-understood; there is no out-of-the-box solution available. These academic-industry projects often take years to develop solutions and analytic models that provide unique insights.”
Li’s paper, titled “Redesigning Harvesting Processes and Improving Working Conditions in Agribusiness,” forms the basis of his doctoral dissertation. His dissertation supervisor is Saurabh Bansal, professor of supply chain management. Karthik Natarajan from the University of Minnesota and Phil Coles from Lehigh University were co-authors on the paper.
The research investigates the potential benefits of redesigning agribusiness operations — specifically, harvesting processes — to enhance both firm performance and working conditions of employees. Li considered two harvesting protocols: the dominant status-quo practice, namely harvest-all, and an alternative, namely selective harvesting.
In the harvest-all protocol, workers pick all crop units in the areas assigned to them, regardless of the crops’ size, maturity and value, resulting in higher productivity but lower average quality of the harvested produce. Workers also stay in demanding physical postures for longer durations, resulting in significant ergonomic stress.
In contrast, under the selective harvesting protocol, workers take multiple rounds to completely harvest the assigned area, picking only crop units that meet certain criteria in each round. This results in lower productivity but higher average quality of the harvested produce and better ergonomic conditions.
The models illustrate the potential benefits of careful process redesign in creating better working conditions for employees and advancing firms’ social responsibility practices, according to the researchers.