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Beril Toktay - Scheller College of Business - Georgia Tech. Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES

Beril Toktay

Brady Family Chair in Management; Professor of Operations Management; ADVANCE Professor; Faculty Director, Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business | Scheller College of Business at Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES

Dr. Toktay is a sustainable operations and supply chain management researcher and educator.

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Biography

Beril Toktay is Professor of Operations Management, Brady Family Chairholder and ADVANCE Professor. Her primary research areas are sustainable operations and supply chain management. Professor Toktay's research has been funded by several National Science Foundation grants and has received distinctions such as the 2010 Brady Family Award for Faculty Research Excellence and the MSOM Society's 2015 Management Science Best Paper in Operations Management Award. Her research articles have appeared in Management Science, M&SOM, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management and Industrial Ecology. She became a Distinguished Fellow of the MSOM Society in 2017.

Professor Toktay has taught Supply Chain Management courses at the PhD, MBA, and Executive Education levels as well as Operations Management and Operations Research courses at the PhD level. She has developed cases and pedagogical material for MBA and Executive Education audiences and co-curricular educational initiatives at the undergraduate level. She currently teaches Business Strategies for Sustainability in MBA and Executive Education programs. She's a recipient of the 2016 Ernest Scheller Jr. Award for Service Excellence and the Georgia Tech 2015 Women of Distinction Award.

Professor Toktay served as Associate Editor for M&SOM (2007-2018), POM (2009-2013), and Management Science (2011-2017), and Area Editor (Environment, Energy and Sustainability) for Operations Research (2012-2018). She co-edited the M&SOM Special Issue on the Environment. She was the President of the MSOM Society and VP of Finance of the POM Society. At Georgia Tech, she serves as the Scheller College of Business ADVANCE Professor, a role that is focused on supporting the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in academia. She is the founding Faculty Director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business and the co-architect and Executive Co-Director of Georgia Tech's Serve.Learn.Sustain Quality Enhancement Plan.

Areas of Expertise (1)

Sustainable Business

Selected Accomplishments (5)

Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society

The primary aim of the award is to recognize individuals who have made outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline, 2017

Georgia Tech Faces of Inclusive Excellence

Recognizes a diverse group of faculty, staff, and students who are committed to advancing a culture of inclusive excellence at Georgia Tech and who have distinguished themselves in their research, teaching, and/or service, 2017

Ernest Scheller Jr. Award for Service Excellence

Presented by Scheller College of Business, 2016

Management Science Best Paper in Operations Management Award

With V. Agrawal, M. Ferguson and V. Thomas, 2015

Georgia Tech Women of Distinction Award

Honors women who demonstrate exemplary leadership abilities. These are women who lead with heart, creating innovative solutions while inspiring and uplifting the entire Georgia Tech Community. She encompasses the ideals of a successful leader, radiating a demeanor that compels others to do the same, 2015

Education (3)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Ph.D., Operations Research 1998

Purdue University: M.S., Industrial Engineering 1994

Boğaziçi University, Istanbul Turkey: B.S., Industrial Engineering and Mathematics 1992

Affiliations (3)

  • INSEAD: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor
  • Harvard: Visiting Scholar
  • Community Consulting Teams (CCT) Atlanta: Pro bono consulting

Selected Media Appearances (4)

How to keep computers out of landfills and recyclers out of prison

GreenBiz  

2018-02-27

We’re not legal experts, but we’ve spent many years researching how electronics manufacturers can adopt more sustainable and circular business models. High-end computer manufacturers regularly employ strategies to help control or manage the secondary market for their products. High-end computer manufacturers regularly employ strategies to help control or manage the secondary market for their products.

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First Cohort of Faculty, Staff, and Students Complete Diversity and Inclusion Fellows Program

Georgia Tech News Center  

2018-01-05

“After selecting the first cohort from their submitted proposals, the fellows were grouped into teams, and each team had a leader or co-leaders,” remarked Beril Toktay, ADVANCE Professor in the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business, Brady Family Chair and faculty director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, and co-director of the Diversity and Inclusion Fellows Program. “This cohort represented an excellent cross-section of the Institute. We are proud of the authenticity of this program thanks to the unique perspecties of the fellows.”

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Bridging Surplus with Need: Improving Healthcare in the Developing World

Huffington Post  

2017-11-15

As scholars of supply chain and operations management, we became interested in MSROs because we cared about the important work they do and because we were in the unique position to optimize the delivery of healthcare capabilities to resource-constrained healthcare facilities in the developing world. However, MSRO supply chains threw us for a loop. Why? Effective management of MSRO supply chains often cannot borrow from the common wisdom from product supply chains. Our expertise, and that of most industry experts, lies in for-profit supply chains. When selling to consumers within traditional operations, supply is controllable and demand is uncontrollable. For MSROs, the reverse is true. MSROs can’t control the timing and volume of donations, resulting in an uncertain quantity of supplies. Demand, on the other hand, is boundless.

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Cobb and Toktay Take Carbon Reduction Challenge from Class to Co-op

Georgia Tech Research Horizons  

2017-05-31

Beril Toktay points out, “What’s most exciting about this program is that it teaches students they can be sustainable business champions no matter what their job function is. And even if students aren’t motivated to advance their careers towards a “sustainable business career,” they will still obtain tremendous benefits.” Part of the program’s design is to develop students’ skillsets in building a business case for a project, “selling” a project to management, and demonstrating that taking initiative from within a company can have excellent results for all parties. Having a stand-out internship experience to share will likely boost future employment prospects, as well.

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Research Grants (3)

Co-op and Internship Carbon Reduction Challenge

Ray C. Anderson Foundation’s NextGen Committee and the Scheller College Dean’s Innovation Fund $55,000

2017-06-01

Kim Cobb & Beril Toktay (co-PIs)

SEI Energy Equity Applied Research Grant

SEI $30,000

2017-06-01

Marilyn Brown, Michael Oxman & Beril Toktay (co-PIs)

Strategic Plan Advisory Group (SPAG) Diversity and Inclusion grant

SPAG $280,000

2016-08-01

Magnus Egerstedt, Pinar Keskinocak, Steve McLaughlin & Beril Toktay (co-PIs)

Selected Articles (10)

Social Sustainability in Emerging Economies: The Role of ‘Inclusive Innovation’


Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Research Paper

Basak Kalkanci, Morvarid Rahmani, L Beril Toktay

2018-05-07

This special issue implores us to address sustainability from the lens of emerging economies and the role that innovation can play in this context. We posit that, for sustainable operations research to be relevant in the context of emerging markets, it needs to incorporate social concerns and conditions, with an emphasis on inclusion and equity. Especially important for addressing social concerns in these economies will be product/service innovation, process/business model innovation, and supply chain innovation. We further posit that successful innovation in these areas will require collaboration with the public sector, civil society organizations, and communities. In this paper, we put forward “inclusive innovation” as a unifying approach that enables the collaborative integration of social issues in operations management decisions, particularly in emerging economies. We then focus on contemporary sectoral challenges in services, manufacturing, and agriculture, highlight the relevant social sustainability issues with an emphasis on those relevant to emerging economies, and point to new opportunities for research.

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Design incentives under collective extended producer responsibility: A network perspective


Management Science

Luyi Gui, Atalay Atasu, Özlem Ergun, L Beril Toktay

2018-01-19

A key goal of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation is to provide incentives for producers to design their products for recyclability. EPR is typically implemented in a collective system, where a network of recycling resources are coordinated to fulfill the EPR obligations of a set of producers, and the resulting system cost is allocated among these producers. Collective EPR is prevalent because of its cost efficiency advantages. However, it is considered to provide inferior design incentives compared to an individual implementation (where producers fulfill their EPR obligations individually). In this paper, we revisit this assertion and investigate its fundamental underpinnings in a network setting. To this end, we develop a new biform game framework that captures producers’ independent design choices (noncooperative stage) and recognizes the need to maintain the voluntary participation of producers for the collective system to be stable (cooperative stage).

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Truthful Mechanisms for Medical Surplus Product Allocation


Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Research Paper

Can Zhang, Atalay Atasu, Turgay Ayer, L Beril Toktay

2017-10-09

We analyze a resource allocation problem faced by Medical Surplus Recovery Organizations (MSROs) that recover medical surplus products to fulfill the needs of under-served healthcare facilities in developing countries. Due to the uncertain, uncontrollable supply and limited information about recipient needs, delivering the right product to the right recipient in MSRO supply chains is particularly challenging. The objective of this study is to identify strategies to improve MSROs' value provision capability. In particular, we propose a mechanism design approach, and determine which recipient to serve at each shipping opportunity based on recipients' reported preference rankings of different products. We find that when MSRO inventory information is shared with recipients, the only truthful mechanism is random selection among recipients, which defeats the purpose of eliciting information. Consequently, we propose two operational strategies to improve MSROs' value provision: i) not sharing MSRO inventory information with recipients; and ii) withholding information regarding other recipients. We characterize the set of truthful mechanisms under each setting, and show that eliminating inventory and competitor information provision both improve MSROs' value provision. Further, we investigate the value of cardinal mechanisms where recipients report their valuations. We show that in our setting, eliciting valuations has no value added beyond eliciting rankings under a wide class of implementable mechanisms. Finally, we present a calibrated numerical study based on historical data from a partner MSRO, and show that a strategy consisting of a ranking-based mechanism in conjunction with eliminating inventory and competitor information can significantly improve MSROs...

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Design implications of extended producer responsibility for durable products


Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Research Paper

Ximin Huang, Atalay Atasu, L Beril Toktay

2017-09-27

We analyze product design implications of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)-based take-back leg islation on durable goods. In particular, we observe that durable product design incentives under EPR may involve an inherent trade-off that has not been explored to date: Durable goods producers can respond to EPR by making their products either more recyclable or more durable, where the former will decrease the unit recycling cost whereas the latter will reduce the volume the producer has to recycle. When these two design attributes do not go hand-in-hand, as is the case for many product categories, product design implications of EPR can be subtle. We find that seemingly similar EPR implementation levers, namely recycling and collection targets, may have opposing effects in driving producers’ design choices. Furthermore, more stringent legislative targets do not always guarantee improved product recyclability and durability. In particular, if the objective of EPR is to induce recyclable product designs, a low recycling target accompanied with a high collection target is preferred. On the other hand, if the objective of EPR is to induce durable product designs, a low collection target accompanied with a high recycling target is preferred.

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The car sharing economy: Interaction of business model choice and product line design


Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Ioannis Bellos, Mark Ferguson, L Beril Toktay

2017-02-23

Several auto manufacturers have recently introduced car sharing programs. Although the structure of most programs is the same, there is no clear dominant strategy for the type of vehicles that should be provided through car sharing. In this paper, we consider an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that contemplates car sharing and designs its product line by accounting for the trade-off between driving performance and fuel efficiency under CAFE standards. Customers have different valuations of driving performance and decide whether to buy, join car sharing or rely on their outside options. We find that the OEM increases the fuel efficiency of the vehicles it provides through car sharing. This higher efficiency enables the OEM to charge a higher selling price to the higher end of the market, thus increasing its profit. This is especially beneficial to higher-end OEMs that face greater cannibalization and can explain why Daimler and BMW have been particularly active in introducing…

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Effective Medical Surplus Recovery


Production and Operations Management

Atalay Atasu, Beril Toktay, Wee Meng Yeo, Can Zhang

2016-10-01

We analyze not‐for‐profit Medical Surplus Recovery Organizations (MSROs) that manage the recovery of surplus (unused or donated) medical products to fulfill the needs of underserved healthcare facilities in the developing world. Our work is inspired by an award‐winning North American non‐governmental organization (NGO) that matches the uncertain supply of medical surplus with the receiving parties’ needs. In particular, this NGO adopts a recipient‐driven resource allocation model, which grants recipients access to an inventory database, and each recipient selects products of limited availability to fill a container based on its preferences. We first develop a game theoretic model to investigate the effectiveness of this approach. This analysis suggests that the recipient‐driven model may induce competition among recipients and lead to a loss in value provision through premature orders. Further, contrary to the common wisdom from traditional supply chains, full inventory visibility…

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Extracting maximum value from consumer returns: Allocating between remarketing and refurbishing for warranty claims


Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Çerağ Pinçe, Mark Ferguson, Beril Toktay

2016-08-29

The high cost of lenient return policies force consumer electronics original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to look for ways to recover value from lightly used consumer returns, which constitute a substantial fraction of sales and cannot be resold as new products. Refurbishing to remarket or to fulfill warranty claims are the two common disposition options considered to unlock the value in consumer returns, which present the OEM with a challenging problem: How should an OEM dynamically allocate consumer returns between fulfilling warranty claims and remarketing refurbished products over the product’s life cycle? We analyze this dynamic allocation problem and find that when warranty claims and consumer returns are jointly taken into account, the remarketing option is generally dominated by the option of refurbishing and earmarking consumer returns to fulfill warranty claims. Over the product’s life cycle, the OEM should strategically emphasize earmarking of consumer returns at the…

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Examples of Existing Protable Practices in Product Take-Back and Recovery


Closed-Loop Supply Chains

Mark Ferguson, Gilvan C Souza, L Beril Toktay

2016-04-19

In practice, we observe that some firms of durable or semidurable goods remanufacture their end-of-use products while others choose not to. Insofar as remanufacturing requires different competencies than manufacturing, whether to enter remanufacturing is a similar question as whether to enter any new business. At the same time, this decision has characteristics of a product line extension decision, as the remanufactured product has the same functionality as the corresponding...

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Interdisciplinarity in closed-loop supply chain management research


Closed-Loop Supply Chains

Vishal Agrawal, L Beril Toktay

2016-04-19

Closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) management has evolved to be a mature area of supply chain management in its own right. Guide and Van Wassenhove (2009) describe how this research began with focusing on tactical and operational issues such as the disassembly of products or shop-floor control and coordination, and later started addressing issues pertaining to the entire reverse supply chain such as product acquisition, supply-chain contracting, and incentives. Recently, the literature has begun studying issues at the intersection of other disciplines, drawing on concepts from industrial ecology, studying marketing issues such as the pricing and positioning of new and remanufactured products, etc. It is clear that the research in CLSCs is moving in an interdisciplinary direction. This is of great value, as the “messier” problems in industry tend to require an interdisciplinary approach. At a recent workshop, invited industry participants shared the issues that they face in closing...

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Design Implications of Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation


Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains

Luyi Gui, Ximin Natalie Huang, Atalay Atasu, L Beril Toktay

2016-01-01

Take-back legislation based on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) holds producers responsible for proper end-of-life treatment of their products. In addition to diverting waste products from landfills, EPR legislation has the potential advantage of incentivizing eco-design of products. However, evidence suggests that product design outcomes of EPR legislation can be significantly influenced by its implementation. In this chapter, we survey the research on this topic, focusing on design impacts associated with several key operational considerations in supply chains. We show that intended design incentives under EPR legislation may be weakened, muted, or even negated as a result of operational factors such as design trade-off, market competition, and recycling resource sharing. Accordingly, we develop insights as to how the design potential of EPR legislation may be realized.

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