About us

Supply Chain Resilience Hub > About us

WMG, The University of Warwick

WMG is a world leading research and education group, transforming organisations and driving innovation through a unique combination of collaborative research and development, and pioneering education programmes.

As an international role model for successful partnerships between academia and the private and public sectors, WMG develops advancements nationally and globally, in applied science, technology and engineering, to deliver real impact to economic growth, society and the environment.

An academic department of the University of Warwick, and a centre for the HVM Catapult, WMG was founded by the late Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya in 1980 to help reinvigorate UK manufacturing and improve competitiveness through innovation and skills development.

High Value Manufacturing Catapult

The High Value Manufacturing Catapult has an established record as the UK’s principal agent of industrial transformation. Working through seven centres of innovation, the HVM Catapult is creating the conditions for UK economic growth by enabling UK manufacturers to investigate new technologies and processes and achieve performance and productivity improvements through innovation.

Established by Innovate UK, the HVM Catapult bridges the gap between business and academia, helping to turn great ideas into commercial realities by providing access to world-class research, development facilities and expertise that would otherwise be out of reach for many businesses in the UK. The HVM Catapult prides itself on helping businesses to transform the products they sell, the way they make them and the skills of their workforce to remain competitive in a global marketplace.

Supply Chain Research Group

The Supply Chain Research Group (SCRG) at WMG is applying customer responsive supply chain theory into practical solutions that generate both economic and societal value. Collaborating with industrial partners, the SCRG seeks to resolve complex business and organisational problems across agrochemicals, automotive, defence, consumer-packaged goods, retail and pharmaceuticals.

Working With Us

Individual Research Projects

If you have an explicit research challenge that needs tackling, we can work with you to bridge the gap between development and market commercialisation in new product, process and service developments. Businesses and public sector organisations can benefit from our applied research which provides new knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and real-world solutions, and can be funded in a variety of ways. If you have a short, medium or long-term business project our industrial and academic experts will work with you to carry out investigations and provide recommended solutions to fit your business challenge.

Collaborative R&D Projects

Join or lead a collaborative business and academic consortium when research funding opportunities arise. We can help with the process. Being part of a consortium of industry and academia working together on a large project will allow you to exploit cross fertilising of ideas and gain new knowledge across the industry sector to help achieve common goals and solutions to wider challenges. Joining a consortium will benefit your business by giving you the opportunity to leverage a broad range of academic and technical experts along with state-of-the-art technologies across different centres.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)

WMG has a proven, successful track record in supporting and offering Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP). The KTP scheme is Europe’s leading programme helping businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK knowledge base. KTPs can range from one to three years during which the academic institution will assist an industrial partner to create strategic and profitable change within their company via a high flying graduate/associate to focus on a specific research challenge.

Build Back Better programme

Improve the productivity, resilience and sustainability of your supply chain through our Building Back Better Programme. Building Back Better brings together a cohort of companies from the same supply-chain and supports them to collaboratively improve the competitiveness, flexibility and transparency of the supply chain. Taking place over 12 months and facilitated by WMG, the programme combines world-leading bite-size learning with extensive practical embedding through a series of workshops, on-site clinics, case studies, change projects, coaching and online resources.

Supply Chain in Practice Collaborator forum

By joining our collaborator forum you will be able to join our “inner circle” of forward-thinking industrial partners who are striving to turn rhetoric into practise. Each forum member brings a different perspective and skill set, from end-user supply chain organisations, to supply re-design and supply chain analytics consultants, and organisations from the legal and HR sectors, to academic researchers. We collaborate across sectors and disciplines to embed and develop supply chain theory into practical solutions, with demonstrated returns. Our members are open minded, collaborative, pragmatic and results orientated and we work with them on company-based projects, practice-oriented events, WMG-led research projects and educational resources such as workshops and online resources. Our SCiP activities are supported by the broader capability base of WMG, at the University of Warwick.

Education & Resources

WMG’s wider range of professional and executive education programmes have also been developed to align with business and market needs and to ensure individuals continue their professional career development and acquire new business skills to tackle existing and future challenges. WMG’s part-time professional staff development opportunities include post-experience and postgraduate entry levels to suit individual needs.

Discovery Research

The business landscape is changing rapidly. The development of technologies that support connectivity and visibility have the ability to transform supply chains, and resolve enduring issues. This could lead to new business models and supply chain configurations. Exploratory or discovery research can be supported in a number of different ways including PhD studentships, Engineering Doctorates and participation in academic-led research projects.

People

Dr Hamid Moradlou

Associate professor in supply chain management

Dr Hamid Moradlou is an associate professor in supply chain management and the lead for the supply chain leadership program at WMG.

Prior to this role, he was the deputy director of MSc in logistics and supply chain management at Cranfield School of Management where he spent three years as a lecturer. He has earned his BEng degree from University of Bath in Mechanical Engineering with Manufacturing Management followed by an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering and Management at Loughborough University. He also obtained his PhD in Supply Chain Management which was funded by the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering at Loughborough University. His research interests mainly focus on investigating the offshoring and re-shoring phenomenon in developed countries and the impacts of new generation of technologies, Industry 4.0, on manufacturing location decision.

Alexandros Zafeiriadis

Lead Engineer

Alexandros (Alex) Zafeiriadis is a Lead Engineer in WMG’s Supply Chain Research Group where he focuses on developing, growing, and anchoring supply chain capability and resilience for manufacturing supply chains.

Alex holds an MEng, Mechanical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and was a Top 1% of Class graduate for his MSc in Engineering Business Management from Warwick Manufacturing Group.

Alex joined WMG as an Analyst working with Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens, Vodafone and Highways England, among others, to identify collaborative business opportunities for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. Alex was then promoted to the role of Project Engineer and continued working on building strategic and commercially sensible supply chains for emerging technologies, developing digital tools and appropriate methodologies to maximise the role of UK supply chains globally. He is currently leading the development of the Supply Chain Resilience Hub, a cornerstone for the post-pandemic recovery, as well as managing a team of project engineers for the Supply Chain Research Group’s applied research project portfolio.

James Black

Innovation Manager

A graduate of Warwick University with postgraduate qualifications in Supply Chain Fundamentals and Supply Chain Design from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, James leads on all WMG SME Group activity in the field of supply chain transformation.

As well as a strong academic background in supply-chain management, James is experienced in assisting businesses to develop and implement their end-to-end supply-chain change programmes and draws on over a decade of experience working with high-growth SMEs and startups in a variety of leadership positions. James is currently studying for his MBA at Warwick Business School with a focus on strategy, change management and building sustainable organisations.

Taofeeq Ibn-Mohammed

Assistant Professor and Head of Sustainability Research

Dr Taofeeq Ibn-Mohammed is an Assistant Professor and the Head of Sustainability Research within WMG’s Supply Chain Research Group.

He has over 15 years of professional/academic experience spanning, energy & sustainability, climate change research, and IT/Telecommunications, with a multi-disciplinary perspective, integrating technical, economic, environmental, energy and policy issues. Before WMG, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Materials Research In-stitute, Pennsylvania State University, USA. He holds a PhD in Energy Systems Engineering.

Carl Che

Project Engineer

Carl Che is a Project Engineer with 5 years of working experience mainly at a Fortune 500 automotive company in Supply Chain Management (SCM) field including purchasing, operation, warehousing, and logistics across multiple international projects around the world.

He holds a Master's degree in Supply Chain and Logistics Management from the University of Warwick, as well as a Bachelor's degree in SCM from Michigan State University, which is ranked No. 1 in SCM in the United States, and is certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) and Transportation and Logistics (CTL). Carl joined WMG a year ago with the goal of establishing a more sustainable and resilient manufacturing environment in the UK working on projects for new distributed manufacturing models. He is currently developing sustainable supply chains designs.

Tony Ridler

Project Manager

Tony Ridler is a Project Manager with a BSc Hons. in Chemistry from Manchester University and an MBA from Warwick Business School.

Tony has over twenty-five years' experience in managing product and process development projects in the Chemical and Electronics/Solar sectors, specialising in process validation, Pilot scale-up to volume manufacturing and global technology transfer. Since joining WMG in 2014 Tony has been responsible for the project management of a wide variety of Low Carbon transport manufacturing and Supply Chain themed projects, HVM Catapult, RCUK, EU and industrial partner funded.

Tracy Smith

Project Coordinator

Joined Supply Chain in Practice in January 2020 to support all project and administration requirements for the team.

Tracy previously worked in the History Department in the Univer-sity of Warwick for 12 years.

Orsolya-Anna Mate

Project Engineer

Orsolya is a Project Engineer who developed intercultural competences through studying and interning abroad in six different countries.

The experience of cross curricular learning (management, economics, and logistics) prepared her to make sense of ever more complex global issues and form a holistic understanding of international markets. She was an intern at the European Parliament where she was reporting to the Vice-Chair of the International Trade Committee. This experience had a major impact on her decision of furthering her studies in logistics and supply chain management. She holds an MSc degree from the University of Hull.

During her studies in Hull, she had the opportunity to engaged in varied live projects as a research assistant. Orsolya joined WMG in December 2020. She was initially working for a partner who was in the process of advancing the production readiness level to MRL7 and was refining the supply chain to enable initial production of units for market qualification. Orsolya is now involved in a regional study and explores opportunities of improving the productivity of the Midlands region by 2035 through the adoption of distributed manufacturing. She is also involved in the Circular Metal research programme (part of UKRI: Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres) and works in collaboration with researchers from Brunel University London.