Professor Paul Cousins - personal details

Role: Professor of Operations Management

Email:

Tel: +44 (0)161 3063459

Location: Manchester Business School East-F11

Websites

• Manchester Business School

Paul is Professor of Operations Management at Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester. He began his career in industry working for Westland Helicopters.  Before reading for a Degree at Sheffield in Informatics (Applied Statistics, Operations Research and Systems Design).  He then spent a secondment at Sikorsky Aircraft in the USA working as a Contracts Negotiator.  After the secondment he decided to go back to University and read for his MBA (Bath) and subsequently Ph.D. (Bath).  During his studies he worked closely with Professor Lamming to set up the Centre for Research in Strategic Purchasing and Supply (CRiSPS).  After working in academia for a few years he decided to move to management consulting and worked for A.T.Kearney in the European Procument Practice Group.  During this time Paul worked for a wide variety of firms and sectors helping to implement best purchasing practice and designing 'new' methodologies for ATK.  Subsequently Paul decided to return to academia to pursue a research career.  He moved back the University of Bath and after three years he was offered a Senior Lectureship at the University of Melbourne, Australia and then a Professorship at Queen's University Belfast and in 2005 he moved to Manchester Business School.

Paul has held EPSRC Research grants totalling £1m and also several industrial funded grants worth approximately £500k.  He is currently in the process of submitting several grant proposals on Environmental Supply, Innovation with SCM and Inter-firm relationships.  Paul has published widely, he is the author of four books and over 40 published journal papers and a further 30 or so conference papers.

Paul currently holds a grant from the Sustainable Consumption Institute which is focusing on understanding the nature of 'green supply' management in the UK.  He is hoping to take this data and construct a benchmarking tool which will be tested by a major retail firm.  He is also currently working on a large EPSRC grant application on sustainability for submission in early 2009.

Paul's move to MBS was in line with his focus to build a world class research network in Supply Chain Management (see www.scmrg.com).  He is currently the Director of the Supply Chain Management Research Group and works closely with Dr Squire (MBS) and Dr Lawson (QUB) to maintain the groups international profile.  Since moving to MBS Paul has helped to strengthen and develop the SCM offerings across under and post graduate programmes.  He currently has six Ph.D. students and is actively involved in a range of research projects.  Including Environmental Supply Risk Management (with Tesco).