Host Bryndis Whitson welcomes Dr. Rajbir Bhatti, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Logistics at Mount Royal University, to the show to talk about his career journey and what led him to Mount Royal. Having started with a background in engineering and data analytics, Dr. Bhatt’s PhD explored fuzzy logic in supplier relationship management. He explains this to Bryndis, and shares the academic and applied work that has defined his career, including contributions to logistics education and infrastructure planning in northern Canada.

The importance of supply chain resilience is emphasized by Rajbir, especially considering recent global disruptions such as COVID-19 and geopolitical trade tensions. He and Bryndis discuss Canada’s need to diversify trade routes by leveraging opportunities in Europe and Asia. Through initiatives like the Supply Chain Analytics Lab and partnerships with CN and Bison Transport, Dr. Bhatti advocates for experiential learning and the necessity of preparing students for real-world logistics careers. He has a LinkedIn newsletter called ‘Supply Unchained’ that addresses current trade dynamics and global supply chain strategy, among other topics. This episode is an important listen for professionals and students in logistics and global trade alike.

About Dr. Rajbir Bhatti:

Dr. Bhatti is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Bissett School of Business. He is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council (CSCSC), which brings together partners in the sector to develop solutions to the human resource challenges faced by stakeholders in Canada's economy.

His current interests revolve around studying the carbon footprints of global supply chains and to understand, model and help reduce such footprints in logistics through better process design. Another area of interest to him is in warehousing and distribution where he works to understand workplace safety issues as a function of organization design. Currently, his team and he are also working on performance evaluation modelling of dealerships of heavy equipment manufacturers in Canada using Network Data Envelopment Analysis (NDEA) and also using the black box technique. He had also been engaged in analytical modelling of 3PL selection issues and has used hierarchy based discrete and fuzzy models to analyze the supplier selection problem.

Dr. Bhatti has also served at the Department of Supply Chain Management, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba (UoM), where he taught advanced supply chain management courses in the Asper MBA Program (apart from teaching for the Asper Undergraduate Program). He worked as a volunteer for the University Technologies Inc. (INNOVATE CALGARY) at the University of Calgary where he carried out analysis and examinations of new invention patent applications for technical novelty and commercialization potential. He was responsible for performing market research, preliminary infringement analyses and search for "prior art" by analyzing patent file histories at USPTO and identification of potential licenses. Further, he has been a member of several bodies for curriculum design for under graduate courses in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and has a rich Industrial experience in ISO 9000 certification as Management Representative.

Dr. Bhatti has a number of research publications in peer reviewed, indexed journals and conferences. He has authored one book and is the Editor-in-Chief (Emeritus) of the International Journal of Applied Industrial Engineering, Pennsylvania, USA. He has guided one PhD and three Master's theses so far and has served on several Ph.D. committees.

—

Contact Bryndis Whitson:

• Website: ZebrasToApples.com
• Instagram: @ZebrasToApples
• LinkedIn
  
  

Contact Dr. Rajbir Bhatti:

• Book: “Implementing Quality Systems in Small and Medium Enterprises: The classic case of an economy with agrarian leanings” by Rajbir Bhatti
• LinkedIn
  
  

—

Transcript

Bryndis 0:03

Hi. My name is Bryndis Whitson, and you're listening to Zebras to Apples, the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. I'm here with Rajbir Bhatti, who is a professor of supply chain at Mount Royal University, and we will be talking about many different topics, and we'll just start right into it. So thank you for being here, Raj.

Rajbir 0:27

Thank you for having me, Bryndis. How are you today?

Bryndis 0:29

Really good. It's that's the thing I've loved so far about putting every 11 episodes is almost every single person, I think, every person I've interviewed has been a friend and someone that I've had you know, has a lot of passion for the industry, and that's exactly what this is all about, too, so.

Rajbir 0:50

Thank you, Bryndis, so I feel honored.

Bryndis 0:52

Mm, hmm, so tell me a little bit about your background, your career history, and what led you to Mount Royal and everything in between.

Rajbir 1:02

Okay, let's go all the way back to a small province in the North of India called Punjab. That's where the Sikh community is mostly and I was sent to a Roman Catholic school. So the first 16 years of my education was in a Roman Catholic school, just the way the education school education system in India is set up. The Catholic educational system is- they provide the best education, if you will, to date. And then I was a sports person as well. Academics has been, of course, front and center, just because my father is a retired professor of physics now he served at the university there. And my mom, she was a librarian with multiple master's degrees, one in political science, one in economics. And she finally decided to do a Masters in library and information science. So you can see the academics running there. But I was also a sports person. You know, 200 meters and 400 meters were my two best, you know, events. And I was also on the cricket team for this. In that part of the world cricket is, is, is pretty much religion, if you will. So I grew up in a very open minded society, economy, family. And then, you know, in India, as some of your listeners would know, the choices for young kids are, either you want to become a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer or something of that sort, but those limited options and everything else was, at least in those days, considered to be out of scope. So my brother, because he was a medical doctor, and I saw how hard his life was, I kind of chickened out, and I said, Okay, I don't want to get into med school, and I want to get into engineering. So my first degree was in mechanical engineering, and I'd always thought of being that mechanical engineer who would sort of work with machines, and, you know, do all the fantastic things which I never could. Then, my master's was also in mechanical engineering. In fact, that is where I found my love for ...