When Professor Albert Ha returned to Hong Kong in 2001 to work at the HKUST Business School, the timing was almost perfect. China was becoming the world's factory and Professor Ha's specialist field - supply chain management - was a hot topic.
“Supply chain in a nutshell is a process to design, make and deliver a product to the end consumer,” explains Professor Ha, Wei Lun Foundation Professor of Business at HKUST. “In the old days, we had big firms that did everything. Nowadays, a company like Apple concentrates on design and marketing, and outsources production to third-party manufacturers.”
Professor Ha is a distinguished scholar in operations management. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1992. Prior to joining HKUST in 2001, he has served on the faculty of the School of Management of Yale University for nine years. His areas of research include production and inventory management, supply chain competition, contracting and information sharing in supply chains.
Supply chain management has experienced significant changes, as the pace of globalization accelerates. One of Professor Ha’s early observations was a shift in the supply chain process from production efficiency to value creation, whereby supply chain management helps support the innovation of a company. For example, a high-tech company would need a supply chain to bring a new product to market quickly and efficiently, and without tying up a lot of money holding large inventory.
“The focus is now shifting from value creation to corporate social responsibility,” says Professor Ha. “It doesn’t mean that value creation is no longer important, it means that creating value just isn’t enough.” It is necessary to meet high standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR), he adds. “In many countries consumers are very sensitive to the CSR performance of companies.”
For Professor Ha, research work should address the needs of the business community, and also challenge conventional thinking by asking bold questions, devising ways to answer them and opening new opportunities.
Professor Ha’s current study is on information sharing in supply chains. Referring to the practices of some large retailers in the US, he says: “They share massive demand and consumer information with the manufacturers, sometimes charging a fee for the information. I want to see under what conditions the retailers have greater incentive to share more information with the manufacturer to improve supply chain performance.”
With digitalization, there’s now far more information. Indeed, for companies to operate effectively in a supply chain, a lot of information is needed about the consumer, the operations and every stage of the supply chain through to the shop check-out.
Professor Ha says sharing information can open the doors to better decision-making, but it’s up against different incentives and conflicts of interest. If retailers share too much information with their manufacturers, then the manufacturer may try to take advantage of the information in negotiation… and sharing information may not be such a good idea.
Trust is critical. “If I’m competing with other manufacturers and retailers share my proprietary information – maybe operational data or technology – with my competitors, then that would be very damaging,” he says.
“To help companies share more information in a way that creates win-win situations, we can look at contracts for example to share the gain to the partners in a fair way,” says Professor Ha. While signing a contract doesn’t replace personal trust, “a formal contract can still help a great deal, because you want the legal protection and a basis for distributing the gains.”
Research and teaching go hand in hand at HKUST Business School. Besides being a prolific researcher, Professor Ha is also an outstanding teacher. He teaches master's programs and supervises PhD students. Through teaching, Professor Ha wants not only to share his research work, but also to set an example of commitment and professionalism. His first PhD student at HKUST achieved the unusual feat of getting two articles from his thesis research published in top academic journals.
Professor Ha feels that innovation and continuous improvement are essential for effective teaching. He has developed a classroom simulation game for his students to learn operations management through a sailboat-making process. Many students told him that they still remember the game well after they graduated from HKUST for a long time.
Professor Ha believes that he can always do more. In his professional community, he also serves within professional bodies and on the editorial boards of several top academic journals in his field. He is a department editor of Production and Operations Management, and an associate editor of Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. Although it is a lot of work, Professor Ha enjoys the roles of reviewing papers and making decisions on whether to accept them for publication. “I think it is important because I want to influence the research direction of supply chain management in a positive way,” he adds.