ASU professor receives most prestigious award in supply chain management

Dale Rogers, the ON Semiconductor Professor of Business in the Department of Supply Chain Management at the W. P. Carey School of Business, has been named the recipient of the CSCMP 2021 Distinguished Service Award by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

The award is bestowed upon an individual for significant achievements in the logistics and supply chain management industry. Presented annually, the award was instituted in 1965 as a tribute to logistics pioneer John Drury Sheahan. In September, Rogers will accept the award at CSCMP’s EDGE Conference, the largest of its kind for the supply chain management industry. 

“This award means a lot to me,” Rogers said. “It’s great recognition for our department and the work that is being done here. Previous award winners include leading practitioners and academics. I’m the first Sun Devil to ever win this award and I hope there are several more.”

Rogers, who came from Rutgers University as a professor of logistics and supply chain management, is the director of the Frontier Economies Logistics Lab and the co-director of the Internet Edge Supply Chain Lab at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School. He is the principal investigator of the $15 million CARISCA Project and director of Global Projects for ILOS - Instituto de Logística e Supply Chain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2012, he became the first academic to receive the International Warehouse and Logistics Association Distinguished Service Award in its 130-year history. He is a board advisor to Flexe, Enterra Solutions and Droneventory and is a founding board member of the Global Supply Chain Resiliency Council, Reverse Logistics and Sustainability Council and serves on the board of directors for the Organización Mundial de Ciudades y Plataformas Logísticas. 

He has published in the leading journals of the supply chain and logistics fields. Rogers has been principal investigator on research grants from numerous organizations, as well as is a senior editor at the Rutgers Business Journal, area editor at Annals of Management Science, and associate editor of the Journal of Business Logistics and the Journal of Supply Chain Management.

Rogers has made more than 300 presentations to professional organizations and has been a faculty member in numerous executive education programs at universities in the United States, Africa, China, Europe and South America as well as at major corporations and professional organizations. He has been a consultant to several companies and a principal investigator on research grants from numerous organizations as well as an author of several books including the lead author of a new book on the subject of supply chain financing with Rudi Leuschner at Rutgers Business School and Tom Choi at the W. P. Carey School.

We caught up with Rogers to learn more about his work.

Question: What is the coolest thing about your career at ASU?

Answer: We have great faculty in ASU’s supply chain management department. The people that we get to work with both in the department and across the university are folks that are at the top of their game. It is a real privilege to get to work on research and new ideas with the supply chain expertise level of people that are here. 

Also, at most universities, central administration gets in the way and most are good at saying, “No.” Here, we have central administration infrastructure, such as ASU International Development with Stephen Feinson that facilitates research and innovation instead of being obstructionist. We’re encouraged to take risks and not just do incremental research, but work on topics that might be transformative in some way.

Q: What gets you up in the morning these days?

A: Right now, we have the CARISCA Project — the largest grant funding in W. P. Carey’s history. Several of my colleagues from ASU’s supply chain department are working on it with me, along with faculty from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. Plus, we have the Internet Edge Supply Chain Lab and the Frontier Economies Logistics Lab where we are working with many companies doing interesting research.

Q: What do you say to students and prospective students who are interested in supply chain?

A: Most of the recruiters that come to W. P. Carey know about our strong supply chain program. We have the best companies in the world come to recruit our students. Supply chain management majors from ASU end up with challenging and great careers. There are a lot of opportunities. 

Q: What do you like to do when you are not working on research?

A: I love playing basketball. It’s getting harder every year, but I still love it. I try to play every week.