Good day, R. Veerababu. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

Professor Veerababu, let's proceed by discussing the critical skills tied to the role of a Professor in Operations. Can you explain your experience with Big Data Analytics, particularly how you have used it in your research or teaching contexts?

Hello, are you there?

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you, Professor Veerababu. Can we begin? My first question relates to your experience with Big Data Analytics, especially in research or teaching scenarios. Could you elaborate on that?

Yeah.

I hope this is audible to you.

Uh uh, to answer your question very specifically regarding the usage of big data analytics in my research.

Uh, I have used uh, some of the analytics techniques.

It's not big data that I used. It's relatively, you know, good data. I have used this technique on a gate manufacturing data set to classify the various gear manufacturing industry to various levels.

In my research, you know, uh.

During my PhD.

And you know, which is basically a unsupervised learning technique, kind of a technique like a clustering and and I try to cluster the different manufacturing industries based on their similarities.

That is one thing I have an experience of using big data analytics in my research work and coming to the the teaching. Currently I'm working at Gitam Team University Hyderabad and.

I'm teaching in, I'm teaching a course on supply chain analytics and where I have an opportunity to deal with, you know, some of the analytics techniques like basically we tried to. You know.

Uh, uh, take the supply chain data and uh.

And the data involves various information regarding the, you know, how much talk is available and other things. That data we got it from Kegel. Kegel is a, a platform where we can get the basically it's a secondary data and we try to apply the, you know, analytics to one thing is that we have done some forecasting and we try to estimate the safety stock.

Nation and, you know, on time order delivery for the data that is, uh, in that way, I have experience, uh, of using big data analytics.

I hope I answered your cush question.

Yeah.

Thank you for elaborating, Professor Veerababu. Your application of clustering techniques during your Ph.D. and your engagement with supply chain analytics in teaching is noted. Now, let’s shift to your familiarity with Text Mining. Could you detail your experience in applying text mining techniques, perhaps in research, teaching, or other projects you've led?

Yeah. So text mining technique is like, you know to basically.

Uh, the machine learning algorithm takes the text mining and analyze the data and based upon some of the features of the data, it will try to categorize the data into different, uh, segments, right? And you know, it can be, it can be faced based upon the features. For example, we have some thousand companies and you wanted to categorize the. You have the data in the form of a text of this thousand companies and.

You know these machine learning techniques and the text mining, text mining, particularly the text mining thing, what it does it it'll try to take the features.

Features from the data and based upon the user requirement and for example, I wanted to categorize the films which are doing comparatively well, you know above 100 course turnover companies I wanted to categorize into certain, certain category. Then the text mining is definitely useful. It's not only in one category, it's, it's completely up to the user requirement and what what user is looking. So based upon that the text mining will definitely help. To classify.

The companies.

In, in crisply, if you want to, if you ask me to say, uh, you know, uh, I remember one of the example that we do, we try to get the capture the data from various websites of these game manufacturing companies. I know with some queries. And once this data is captured at and we try to eliminate because if this data is, you know, raw, it's kind of a.

You know raw data and we try to do the some kind of a data cleaning is required like.

Understood.

You know, when we wanted to particularly focus on the feature, we need to remove the unnecessary data, which is called as a data cleaning and all. Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu. Your explanation regarding text mining, particularly the process of extracting, cleaning, and analyzing data from websites, shows practical knowledge. Now, let’s move on to Service Operations Management. Could you elaborate on your expertise in designing, managing, or optimizing service operations, either through academic work or industry experience?

Yeah. That's that's, that's a very interesting question that you asked.

Particularly.

I have an experience, uh, of, for teaching the courses like operation research and operations management for both UG and uh, PG students. And, you know, uh, and as a part of this teaching this course, we ask the students to do some projects and we also ask the students to do, you know, work on some case methodology.

And you know, the kind of cases that we dealt, you know how to utilize the resources optimally. For example, the case study on Tirumala Tirupathi, which is given by Harvard, it will be focusing on, you know, how to reduce the waiting time.

Particularly I'm teaching to these students of, you know, MBA graduates. Uh, particularly we focus on management students and management students will work on some cases.

You know, in a in a hospital kind of a service environment, how to utilize the resources like, you know, who are the various stakeholders like, you know, doctors and and you know, nurses and you know how how to utilize them effectively in that means. Like we majorly try to find out what is their research utilization and you know, yeah, yeah. So that is 1 aspect and.

Uh, and which will increase the customer experience, customer service in the customer. Here are the devotees. And there is one more beautiful case on cataract clear eyes, which talks about.

When coming to the page and when coming to the projects.

Particularly I, I asked the students to, uh, work on, it can be on scheduling, uh, the scheduling, you know, the scheduling basically to allocate the resources properly. So that means, you know, without any overlap of the resources or, you know, so, so that kind of a projects we asked and, you know, some of the students went to. Healthcare sectors and so they tried to.

You know, optimize the inventory by developing some kind of, uh, mathematical models, uh, based upon the particular context. And, you know, uh, they used some of the techniques like, uh, uh, techniques like, you know, basically they try to formulate a mathematical model which involves mixed integer linear programs. And you know, we asked the students to solve by using CPLEX or good OB based upon their expertise here. Also, one more important thing is that, you know.

Some, you know, students who are very good at mathematical modeling, we ask them to do it, uh, by doing a mathematical modeling and, you know, ask them to do go with the CPLEX or Groby. And some of the students, if they're not that much comfortable with mathematics and, and the coding, then we will be asking them to utilize some kind of a, a softwares and one group, if I remember, and I was asked them to do.

The, you know, optimization of the service operations in a healthcare sector. Uh, So what they have done, they use their Flexim healthcare software.

Now simulate the similar kind of environment and you know, you know, and they no need to do directly any of the mathematical, uh, modeling or programming, but the software help them to do it.

And this software allows the student to.

Yeah, whatever I remember I could able to answer at this right now. And this is what striking to my mind currently to answer your question, yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu. Your insights into teaching operations management, using case studies, and involving students in hands-on projects in various sectors, including healthcare, demonstrate a strong grasp of the domain. Next, could you discuss your approach to designing service systems? How do you integrate aspects like customer experience, process efficiency, and resource utilization into such designs?

Yeah. So to answer your question, when we are, you know, designing a service system, uh, there are, uh.

Uh, majorly like two things we should know, uh, you know, for a particular service that an organization is wanted to offer, we should know what are the customers, what kind of a customers we are there. And you know, what is the customer contact, whether the customer contact, what is the type of the customer contact, whether it is a high or medium.

And.

Degree of divergent and customer contact. And these are all very important things when I'm saying, uh, you know, when, when, when, when any organization, uh, particularly if it is completely service organization and where.

I know it involves customer interaction is high. You need to design your facilities so that you know your layout should be in such a way that it it it give a better customer experience. Particularly let us take an example of a restaurant. You know when a customer is going to in a restaurant and it's not only the food that you are giving to the customer, it's also about what kind of ambience, right? So ambience that you're providing to the customers all these things and.

You know how you design your layout, you know how how it should be. You know, from customer point of view, it should be, you know, ambient in nature, very good kind of an experience. And also from your operation perspective, you need to design your layout in such a way that the movement of the people unnecessarily movements of the, you know, employees who are working in your organization should be eliminated.

That way you know you can able to save your time and you know resource utilization will be useful. And also you should know you should able to calculate, you know at what time what is the current utilization of each of the employee. You know, what is the maximum tile available and how much time employees are available. And also you need to identify the bottleneck. For example, some of the restaurant. You know, particularly when when my students do some projects, we saw there is a heavy load on some of the employees and some of the employees are not at all doing.

I think and this is not same in all the times, but in some of the times. So we need to identify the particular times where the bottleneck is happening and you know, try to add some more resources there and which will balance the overall resource utilization. And and, and particularly when we are working about the service organization. And this is very important because if if an employee is heavily loaded with the work and there is a high chance that he cannot perform. The work effectively.

And you know and and and you know that is one more thing that you know and layout. There are different type of layouts that you know, particularly if it is a map.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu, for your comprehensive explanation regarding the design of service systems. Balancing customer experience, operational efficiency, and resource utilization has come through clearly in your examples, particularly with the restaurant setting. Let’s move to Service Operations Analytics. Could you provide an example of how you've applied analytics to monitor, optimize, or improve service operations, either in teaching, research, or consulting?

Hello.

Yes, Professor Veerababu, I'm here. Could you share an example of your application of Service Operations Analytics in teaching, research, or consulting?

Yeah.

In teaching.

I used to, you know, you know, I, as I mentioned, I don't know, I'm not sure whether you know, this, my call got disconnected and I'm again coming into this. But as I mentioned earlier, you know, I used to take Harvard cases to explain the concepts of, you know, operations and analytics concepts to the students with the help of some of the case studies.

Please continue.

Predominantly Harvard case studies and we asked the students to.

To do the projects and basically they need to you know, you know, optimize the things, optimize the resources of any of the service organization or a manufacturing organization and you know, service organization, the treatment is completely different and manufacturing organization be mostly focusing on efficiency and service organization effectiveness is the major focus.

And you know.

And like, you know, when we are talking about a manufacturing organization, you know what kind of.

Kind of manufacturing it is happening, it's a mass production or a batch production. That means, you know, what is the flexibility of, you know, customization that a company wants to offer based upon the customization it it it the transformation will be changing from mask mass production to the mass customization.

And when coming to the service organization where the customer contact and is is very high and we need to design our layouts in such a way that the customer.

You know, experience needs to be maximized and you know, I also deal some of the projects on scheduling and other things and where we basically ask the students to focus on, you know, how to.

Uh, utilize the resources effectively. And, uh, one example of one, one thing I can remember, I, some of my students worked on a, uh, basically, uh, resource allocation in a factory and where they have certain 500 plus employees and they have approximately around some 600 to 500 tasks. And the main thing is that they are facing a problem with the scheduling. And which person needs to do?

Oh, on which task? And what is the time that the person that kind of a sequencing and scheduling task, they worked and you know, they improved.

The existing practices that were done by 4 to 5% if I'm not wrong. Yeah, so, yeah, so that's what's yeah, as of now I remember these applications and.

Yeah.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu. Your explanation of employing Harvard case studies and directing students to handle resource allocation and scheduling tasks is well-received. The integration of practical projects with theoretical concepts is commendable. Next, let me ask about Sustainable Operations. Could you talk about your expertise or initiatives in promoting sustainability within operations management in terms of teaching, research, or applied projects?

Yeah.

Uh, to answer your question, you know, regarding the sustainability, uh, aspects, uh, in, in, in teaching, uh, you know, particularly when we teach the courses, whether it's an operations management, we focus on a module of total quality management and you know, concepts like Muda and, you know, Muda and you know, 6 Sigma lean management, basically focus to eliminate.

The OR reduce the waste and some of the principles that we, you know, you know, concept that we try to explain to students basically to, you know, improve the sustainability or, you know, circular economy practices of these.

Importance of you know, practicing these things in an organization is very much focused and when we when when we also when I also thought.

Uh, courses like supply chain management, you know, uh, I use the software like any logistics where, uh, they can able to design the entire, uh, supply chain, uh, in a three phases. And it's a Greenfield analysis and network optimization and assimilation where you know, you can, able to determine each and every activities of the supply chain. Let us, I'm only focusing on transportation in the transportation part. We can able to know what kind of vehicle we are using and you know.

We can, we can we ask the students to, you know, calculate what is the total emissions that are happening in entire supply chain by, you know, that software allows the students to give a, you know, per kilometer what is the CO2 emission or per energy.

Paraver what is the CO2 emission and we give that information and we could able to calculate entire CO2 emissions because you know this emissions are going to play a huge role particularly Indian context, you know.

The sustainability is, uh, major challenge and, and you know, and, you know, the, you know, throughout the world, not only in India and lot of focus are given for SDGS and there are 17 sustainable goals that were there. So, yeah.

So yeah, so. So yeah, I do take.

Care of teach these concepts in in my teaching, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu. Your emphasis on sustainability through teaching total quality management principles, addressing waste reduction, and integrating tools like AnyLogistix to calculate emissions in supply chains is impressive. It reflects a strong commitment to fostering sustainable practices in operations management. Could you now discuss your ability to teach theory and laboratory courses, specifically focusing on how you approach balancing theoretical concepts with practical applications?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Please elaborate on how you balance theoretical teaching with practical applications when conducting both theory and laboratory courses. How do you ensure your students gain a comprehensive understanding of both aspects?

Yeah, that's, that's a very good question. You know, when we teach the courses to the students and as a faculty, we need to ensure, you know, the theoretical knowledge needs to be given in a very, very crisp way like that understanding is very important once the student.

If grasping all the theoretical concepts, it can be either through normal class delivery or it can be through case studies, right And once we.

You know, help the students to understand the basic concepts. That is one part that we ensure that, you know, concept is delivered to the students. Then coming to like analytics courses, we need to take the help of some of the tools that are available and you know, and and and a is also one of the. Partner that you know assisting the faculty you know take actively part you know to design our.

Uh, assessment and other things, I feel, uh, both are very important and, and you know, as I mentioned some, there are some, several, uh, softwares that are available and you have to make use of them and we need to put the students into a shoes of a manager.

Or a stakeholder. Then you know the real problem will be solved by the student if he's having enough theoretical understanding. That's what I believe, yeah.

Thank you, Professor Veerababu. Your approach of integrating concise theoretical teaching with practical problem-solving, using case studies and tools, ensures that students can apply their knowledge effectively in real-world scenarios. Let’s move forward now and discuss your experience in student evaluation and exam duties. Could you share how you approach the design of fair and effective assessments for your students?

That that's, that's, uh, very challenging part and very important, uh, thing for a faculty because, you know, you teach, you teach well and you know, you make the, your students to practice good in the laboratories.

Right. That is that alone it's not sufficient. You know the assessment is very important and you know particularly when you do the theoretical kind of an exams like a mid exam and where we have.

You know, structured way of approach to, you know, assess the students. And we do it. We didn't face any problem or and, but, but coming to assessment in case studies and project, it's a challenge because some of these assessment components involve group group components like the students will form a small group and, you know, they work on a particular case or a project and, you know, and, and, and, and we need to assess, you know, group and.

So individually, right, so, so I used to, you know, before my class, I prepare a course pack which will consist of my Lesson plan, you know, assessment, briefer case made, whatever component in that assessment brief everything I'll mention and it will be given before the course started. That's what we practice here. So it so it will be very clear to the students what I'm going to do in my.

Entire class. So, Mike, if I'm given a 30 marks for a case, it's very clearly written, you know, what are on the aspects I'm, you know, going to assess them, let us say and there is a case and you know 30 marks are given for the class discussion will consist of 15 Marks and 15 to 20 Marks and 10 marks for, you know, report.

And if it is a group wise, you know, each student, uh, needs to be assessed within the group and, you know, among the groups, right? And, and, and that clarity we need to give, uh, in the assessment briefs that needs to be told to the students clearly. And that needs to be done at the starting of the course. This is what I'm currently practicing. And, uh, and also, uh, there are different ways of doing it. Some of the times we also use peer group evolution and.

Within the group, uh, we'll ask the other students how, you know, uh, others, what is his contribution? You know, we've, uh, you know, without knowing each other, like in the absence of other members, we'll ask what is the, what do you, what do you think that who contributed more, Right. Like that? So this, this I, I will not do always, but yes, if I feel like this is required, then I will do that also, yeah.

Yes, I answered.