About Shardul

Shardul Phadnis is a Full Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Asia School of Business (established in collaboration between MIT Sloan Management and Bank Negara Malaysia) and Founding Director of Ops21™: Operations for 21st Century. His expertise at the intersection of supply chains and strategic management - supply chain scenario planning and supply chain orchestration - aims to help enterprise leaders build adaptive supply networks capable of navigating severe market turbulence.

Shardul brings a rare dual perspective to executive advisory and speaking: seven years of direct, factory-floor operational leadership as Director of Continuous Improvement and Lean/ERP practitioner, combined with MIT-trained scholarship holding an MIT PhD in Engineering Systems and MEng in Logistics. He translates complex academic insights into practical strategic foresight and operational insights for leaders managing multi-million and $1B+ operational budgets.

His applied research and scenario planning frameworks have directly guided decision-making for Fortune 500 multinationals and public sector entities across the United States, Asia, and Europe, including 7-Eleven, AB InBev, BASF, Cardinal Health, Intel, and the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. Lessons from his industry projects are published in Strategic Planning for Dynamic Supply Chains (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), a seminal book on supply chain scenario planning that Shardul co-authored with his MIT colleagues, Prof. Yossi Sheffi and Dr. Chris Caplice.

Beyond his university leadership, Shardul has collaborated with University of Oxford's Hyundai Motor Group Foresight Centre for devloping scenarios on the theme of futures of East Asia. He also serves on the editorial boards of California Management Review and Futures & Foresight Science, and is President Emeritus of The Lost Food Project, Malaysia's largest foodbank.