Bodhibrata Nag

Bodhibrata Nag

Designation

Professor
Academic Group: Operations Management

Contact

Phone No.: +91-33-24678300 to 06, Ext 752(Work)
Email ID.: bnag

Biography

Personal Details:

Bodhibrata Nag (Ph.D./Fellow, Operations Research and System Analysis, IIM Calcutta & Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras) is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. He has held the position of Acting Director, Dean (Academic), Provost & Chairperson of Student Affairs, Chairperson of Doctoral Programs and Research, National Coordinator for Post Graduate Program for Executives for Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing at IIM Calcutta, as well as Director of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park. He holds certifications in various areas of Operations Management, Logistics, Supply Chain, and Data Sciences from The World Bank, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Georgia Institute of Technology, ESSEC Business School, University of Virginia, University of Amsterdam, John Hopkins University, Delft University of Technology and Technical University of Munich. He has received training in the case methods of teaching and case development at Harvard Business School and power projects design at Electricite de France. He has 21 years of transportation and energy industry experience and 18 years of teaching and research experience at IIM Calcutta. He has served in the Central Electricity Authority and Indian Railways in senior management positions of various bodies, including the Director of Research Design and Standards Organization of the Ministry of Railways. He was instrumental in starting IIM Calcutta's One-year Visionary Leadership for Manufacturing program (which is now running its fifteenth year) and the One-year Advanced Program in Supply Chain for corporate executives (which is now running its tenth year), launching electives covering Operations Research Modeling, Quality Management, and Project Management, as well as developing management case studies in the Indian context about public sector companies such as Indian Railways, Delhi Metro, CPWD and Hindustan Petroleum for Harvard Business Publishing and IIM Calcutta Case Centre. He has authored two books "Optimal Design of Timetables for Large Railways" and "Business Applications of Operations Research" and co-authored the Special Indian Edition of Hillier & Lieberman's classic textbook "Introduction to Operations Research", besides publishing in numerous national and international journals and conferences proceedings. He has also been a consultant to The World Bank, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Ministry of Railways, Planning Commission, West Bengal Department of Health & Family Welfare, and the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. He is currently a Director of an online food delivery startup and a Mentor of a software development startup. He has been elected a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers(India) and a Senior Member of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE, USA). He has been a visiting Professor at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) and BNSF Railway (Dallas, Texas, USA) on the Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship. He topped the University and Union Public Service Commission’s Engineering Services Examination, besides securing a very high rank in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination. He has also been awarded the "The Union Ministry of Energy-Department of Power" Gold Medal for the best paper published on Power Development and Utilization at the 29th Indian Engineering Congress, as well as the First Position in the Triple Connection Global Educator Challenge conducted by Inchainge, The Netherlands in 2023. His primary research interests are applying analytic techniques for planning, designing, and operations of energy and sustainable supply chain systems and cybersecurity. https://vidwan.inflibnet.ac.in/profile/56040 https://www.linkedin.com/in/bodhibrata-nag-8a7677a3/

Academics

Academic Background:

  • Fellow(PhD), Operations Research & Systems Analysis, IIM Calcutta 
    B.Tech, Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras 
    ICSE & Pre-University, St.Edmund's, Shillong 
     
  • Certification and Professional Training:
    • Certificate in Railway Officers Foundation & Induction Course, National Academy of Indian Railways(Vadodara) & Indian Railway Institute of Electrical Engineering (Nasik)
    • Certificate in Contract Management, The World Bank, Washington DC
    • Certificate (with Distinction) in Public Procurement, The World Bank, Washington DChttps://www.procurementlearning.org/bodhibrata-nag/
    • Certificates in Supply Chain Fundamentals, Supply Chain Dynamics, Supply Chain Design, Supply Chain Analytics & Supply Chain Technology and Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Transportation & Logistics
    • Certificate in Supply Chains for Manufacturing I, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Leaders for Global Operations Program
    • Certificate in Supply Chain Management Principles, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistics Institute)
    • Certificates in Operations Management Fundamentals and Operations Analytics, University of Pennsylvania(Wharton)
    • Certificate in Fundamentals of Revenue Management, ESSEC Business School
    • Certificate in Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management, University of Virginia
    • Certificate in Project Management, International Institute of Projects and Program Management
    • Certificate in Quantitative Methods(Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences), University of Amsterdam
    • Certificate (with Distinction) in R Programming, John Hopkins University (Bloomberg School of Public Health)
    • Certificates in Data Cleaning, Exploratory Data Analysis, Reproducible Research, Statistical Inference,Regression
    • Analysis,Data Product Development & Practical Machine Learning using R, John Hopkins University (Bloomberg School of Public Health)
    • Certificate in Fundamentals of Six Sigma Quality Engineering & Management, Technische Universitat Munchen (Munich)
    • Certificate in Railway Engineering, Delft University of Technology
    • Certificate of Completion in course on "History and Future of the University: Leadership and Change" , Ashoka University
    • Training in Case Writing & Course Development, Harvard Business School, Boston
    • Training in Participant Centered Learning Methods, Harvard Business School, Boston
    • Training in Power Electronics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
    • Training in Electrical & Computer Aided Testing, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
    • Training in Power Plant Design Engineering, Electricite de France(Paris) & Alstom(Belfort)
    • Certified Trainer for The Fresh Connection Perishable Product Supply Chain simulation game (Inchainge BV, Netherlands)
    • Certified Trainer for The Blue Connection Circular Business Supply Chain simulation game (Inchainge BV, Netherlands)
    • Certified Trainer for The Triple Connection Sustainable Supply Chain simulation game (Inchainge BV, Netherlands)

 

Courses Taught:

  • Operations Research (for MBA & Doctoral students covering Linear Programming, Integer Programming, Network Theory, Dynamic Programming, Goal Programming, AHP, Queuing Theory, Genetic Algorithm, Tabu Search, Simulated Annealing, Queuing Theory, Simulation) 
  • Operations Research Modeling (for MBA students covering Supply Chain Network Design, warehouse location and distribution planning, Warehouse order picking models, Vehicle routing models and algorithms, Airlines and courier services network design, Revenue management models using LINGO, AIMMS, CPLEX, AnyLogic and ARENA software)
  • Project Management (PGPEX-VLM, PGDBA & MBAEX students) 
  • Decision Models and Software (for MBAEX students covering Supply Chain Network Design, warehouse location and distribution planning, Warehouse order picking models, Vehicle routing models and algorithms, Airlines and courier services network design, Revenue management models using LINGO, AIMMS, CPLEX, AnyLogic and ARENA software) 
  • Sustainable Supply Chain Analytics (for MBA and MBAEX students using LINGO and CPLEX software)
  • Advanced Graph Theory (for Doctoral students covering Euler Tours, Chinese Postman Problem, Hamiltonian Graphs, Travelling Salesman Problem, Matchings and Marriage Problem, Graph Coloring) 
  • Quality Management & Six Sigma (for MBAEX students) 
  • Simulation Modeling (Doctoral students & MBA students with Simio (https://www.simio.com) simulation software under a grant from Simio LLC) 
  • Business Risk Management (MBA) 
  • Strategic Game Theory (MBA & MBAEX) 
  • Business Mathematics (MBA & MBAEX) 
  • Toyota Production System (PGPEX-VLM) 
  • R Programming(Doctoral students) 
  • Operations Management (XLRI) 
  • Data Communication and networking (IRIEEN) 
  • Database Management Systems (IRIEEN) 
  • Visual Basic & VBA Programming (IRIEEN) 

Regular Sessions on Project Management (including financing and risk management aspects), Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Contracts & Arbitration (including provisions of Indian Contract Act, The Sale of Goods Act, The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, The Information Technology Act), Logistics (including Export-Import procedures, shipping, Incoterms, warehouse design and operation aspects and provisions of Carriers Act, Multimodal Transportation of Goods Act, Indian Bill of Lading Act, Indian Carriage of Goods by Sea Act) , Quality Management, Lean Management and Supply Chain Modelling in various MDPs and In Company Programs offered by IIM Calcutta for executives of Indian Police Service, Indian Railway Services, Indian Statistical Service, ONGC, State Electricity Board, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, West Bengal Department of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, NHPC, GAIL, NEEPCO, Ordnance Factory Board, NTPC, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI), Coal India, Flipkart, Taegutec Worldwide, Bharti Airtel, RPG Group, Geological Survey of India, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers, Faculty of Punjab Engineering College University of Technology, Bharat Dynamics Limited, National Textile Corporation, Orient Craft, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, CEAT, Yes Bank, Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG, German Investment Corporation), Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India etc 

Program Director: 

  • Training Program on Project Management for Officers of Directorate General of Lighthouses and Lightships (Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways), 2023
  • Executive General Management Program for Executives of Accenture 2022-23, 2023-24 & 2024-25
  • Long Duration Programs on Advanced Supply Chain Management (a)First Batch: January 2012-January 2013 (b)Second Batch: January 2013-January 2014 (c) Third Batch: January 2014 to January 2015 (d) Seventh Batch: January 2018 - January 2019 (d) Tenth Batch: August 2022 - July 2023 (e) Eleventh Batch: August 2023-July 2024 (f) Twelfth Batch: July 2024-July 2025 
  • Management Development Program on Financial Decision Making for WBRS & WBAAS Officers, Dec 2018 
  • Management Development Program on Lean Management, Aug 2018 
  • Management Development Program on Quality Analytics, Jan 2018 
  • Management Development Program on Theory of Constraints & Lean Management, Aug 2017 
  • Executive General Management Program for Executives of AstraZeneca, Aug 2017-Sept 2018 
  • Advanced Project Management for Scientists of Defence Research and Development Organisation (Ministry of Defence http://www.drdo.gov.in), Feb-Mar 2017
  • Executive General Management Program for Executives of Nestle, Jan 2017- Mar 2018 
  • General Management Program for Executives of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation http://www.delhimetrorail.com/ , December 2016 
  • Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises (Department of Public Enterprises http://dpe.gov.in/) sponsored training program on Project Management for Senior Executives of State Level Public Enterprises, August 2015 
  • Project Management Across Borders in association with Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation(http://www.mospi.gov.in/) and Project Management Institute(http://www.pmi.org.in/) for Central Public Sector Enterprises, Kolkata and Washington DC, Feb-Mar 2014 
  • Management Development Program on Project Management, January 2012 Railway Board(http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/) sponsored Executive General Management Program for Indian Railway Service Probationer Officers, April-May 2009 
  • Long Duration Program on Supply Chain Management, July 2009-February 2010 
  • Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region(http://mdoner.gov.in/) sponsored Management Development Program on Customer Orientation in Public Services, July 2009 
  • Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (Ministry of Rural Development http://pmgsy.nic.in/ ) sponsored Management Development Program for Executives on Maintenance Management, 26-30 October and 9-13 November 2009

Awards:

  • Winner of The Triple Connection Global Educator and Trainer Challenge 2023 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/inchainge_winning-teams-activity-7135643800365903872-ExWg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Around 190 participants from more than 45 companies and 35 universities worldwide battled for the title of supply chain sustainability champion.
  • Awarded the "The Union Ministry of Energy-Department of Power" Gold Medal for the best paper published on Power Development and Utilization at the 29th Indian Engineering Congress 2014. 
  • Awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship(http://www.usief.org.in/Fellowships/Fulbright-Nehru-Fellowships.aspx) by United States – India Educational Foundation(http://www.usief.org.in/) & Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA https://eca.state.gov/) of the U.S. Department of State; Visiting Research Faculty at College of Industrial & Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor(MI http://www.engin.umich.edu/ioe) and Decision Systems Division,BNSF Railway, Fort Worth(TX http://www.bnsf.com/) 
  • "Best Professor in Operations Management- DNA B-School Innovative Award” ,Mumbai,Feb 2013 
  • "Best Professor in Operations Management- CMO Asia Award” , Dubai, Sept 2011 
  • Elected Senior Member, 
    IEEE Elected Fellow, Institution of Engineers(India) https://ieindia.org/ 
  • General Manager's Best Officer Award and Efficiency Medal, South Eastern Railway 
  • UPSC(http://www.upsc.gov.in/) Engineering Services (Electrical) Exam National Second Rank 
  • IIT Joint Entrance Exam All India Rank 231 
  • Pre-University (Science) University Topper, offered admission to IIT Bombay B.Tech(Elect) under University Rank Holders Direct Admission

Consulting Interests:

Energy,transport, supply chain, procurement and logistics

Current Projects:

  • [Research Project] Development of Metaheuristic Formulations for Stowage Plan Problem
  • [Research Project] On heuristics for the development of locomotive and crew links for large railways

Past Projects:

  • [Consultancy- with Ashok Banerjee & Debashis Saha] Business Process Reengineering and Change Management for the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of West Bengal, 2019-20 
  • [Consultancy- with Anju Seth & Sudhir Jaiswall] Designing a Central Public Sector Enterprises Scorecard Index for Comptroller & Auditor General of India, 2019-20
  • [Consultancy] World Bank and Deloitte project on rail capacity modeling for Indian Railways using GIS, 2019-20
  • [with Shoji Shiba, Shekhar Chaudhuri, Manabendra Nath Pal, TT Narendran, and Ashok Mittal] Program Design, Curriculum development, and rollout of Post-Graduate Program for Executives for Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing (PGPEX-VLM) in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, Ministry of Human Resources Development, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, Confederation of Indian Industry and Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2006-2008
  • [with B.B.Chakraborti, Anindya Sen and other faculty of Mentoring Task Force] Site selection and logistics for launching of IIM Ranchi https://www.iimranchi.ac.in/, 2009-10
  • [Consultancy Project with Leena Chatterjee, Bhaskar Chakrabarti and Ranjan Mitter] Independent Evaluation of Procurement and Supply Chain of National AIDS Control Program. Project commissioned by Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, 2007
  • [Consultancy Project with Ramanuj Majumdar and Sushil Khanna]Formulation of Business and Marketing Plan for Dedicated Freight Corridors of Indian Railways. Project commissioned by Railway Board, Ministry of Railways, Government of India 2009
  • [with Shoummo Acharya]Planning Commission Working Group on Logistics, Government of India 2006-07

Experience

Work Experience:

  • Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers: 
    Director, Research Design & Standards Organization(RDSO http://www.rdso.indianrailways.gov.in/ ), Ministry of Railways, Lucknow 
    Professor, Indian Railway Institute of Electrical Engineering(IRIEEN http://www.irieen.indianrailways.gov.in/ ), Ministry of Railways, Nasik 
    Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer, South Eastern Railway http://www.ser.indianrailways.gov.in/, Kolkata 
    Assistant Divisional Electrical Engineer, Divisional Electrical Engineer, Senior Divisional Electrical Engineer, Waltair Division, South Eastern Railway, Visakhapatnam 
     
  • Central Power Engineering Service: Assistant Director(Hydro-Tidal), Central Electricity Authority http://www.cea.nic.in/, Ministry of Power, New Delhi 
  • Visiting Faculty, XLRI Jamshedpur http://www.xlri.ac.in/
  • Sole and Joint Arbitrator for Government Contracts
  • ISO 9001 Lead Auditor 

    Academic Service at IIM Calcutta: 
    Dean(Academic) 
    Director, IIM Calcutta Innovation Park http://www.iimcip.org/ 
    Founder Coordinator, PGPEX-VLM Programme https://www.iimcal.ac.in/programs/pgpex-vlm 
    Provost & Chairperson, Students Activities Committee 
    Chairperson, Fellow Programme & Research Committee https://www.iimcal.ac.in/programs/doctoral 
    Member, Academic Council, Fellow Programme & Research Committee, Placement Committee, Publications Committee, LDP Committee 
    Member, Board of Governors Building & Works Committee, Regulations Drafting Committee, Code of Conduct Drafting Committee, Digital Transformation Committee & Financial Sustainability Committee

Research

Journal Publications:

  • Bodhibrata Nag, Samir Maity(Aalborg University), and Ayan Chatterjee(SPJIMR), "Towards Green Freight Transportation Using Train Design Optimization", Global Business Review, Date of Publication: 01 November 2022, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/09721509221125560. It is imperative to re-design the freight transport modal mix to ensure a shift from road to rail to limit energy consumption and global GHG emissions. However, one of the main barriers to the shift is the ability of the railways to handle consignments from customers with less than “unit” train loads. In such cases, railways have to combine consignments from different customers to form “unit” trains. Combining consignments is a train design optimization process involving designing a trip plan with the minimum number of trains formed and satisfying a set of conditions. However, manually optimizing train design for high-density freight traffic is challenging and practically impossible. Hence, it is essential to develop an automated train design optimization methodology that railways can quickly implement. Among several conditions of train formation, the two key constraints are the ‘number of work events’ and ‘number of block swaps.’ However, the existing literature considers either of these two constraints in a single decision-making model. We have proposed a train design optimization method based on a genetic algorithm with a priority generator to simultaneously consider both the abovementioned constraints. The train design optimization method developed has also been demonstrated using real-life data. 
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), John Crowcroft(University of Cambridge) and Bodhibrata Nag et.al, "Will Catastrophic Cyber-Risk Aggregation Thrive in the IoT Age? An Economic Take on Managing Aggregate Heavy-Tailed Risks", ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, Volume 12, Issue 2, May 2021, Article No.: 17, pp 1–36, https://doi.org/10.1145/3446635
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), John Crowcroft(University of Cambridge), Yong Li (Tsinghua University), Sasu Tarkoma (University of Helsinki) and Bodhibrata Nag et.al, "Preference-Based Privacy Markets", IEEE Access (Volume 8), Date of Publication: 07 August 2020, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3014882 
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), Konstantinos Psounis(University of Southern California), John Crowcroft(University of Cambridge), Pan Hui (University of Helsinki) and Bodhibrata Nag et.al, "When Are Cyber Blackouts in Modern Service Networks Likely?: A Network Oblivious Theory on Cyber (Re)Insurance Feasibility", ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 2, Article 5 (July 2020), https://doi.org/10.1145/3386159
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Ashok Banerjee, "On a few strategies for a sustainable turnaround of the Indian Railways", Journal of Institute of Public Enterprise (2016) Volume 39, Issue 1 & 2, Page 16-36. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2928581 The paper focuses on evaluation of the few turn around strategies available with the Indian Railways to improve its operating ratio. The strategies examined are (a) choice of electric traction and the pace of electrification (b) improvement of utilization of network capacity (c) bench marking of maintenance expenses (d) bench marking staff deployment and (e) inflation indexed tariff. The paper demonstrates that judicious application of these strategies can have substantial impact on the profit margin of the Indian Railways. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag,"Combating Corruption in Indian Public Procurement- some exploratory case studies", Journal of Institute of Public Enterprise (2015) Volume 38, Issue 1 & 2, Page 1-34.Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2928667 This paper has adopted the exploratory case study method of analyzing a few recent cases of public procurement irregularities documented by the vigilance departments and the CAG available in public domain to inquire into the following issues :(a) how do irregularities and instances of corruption persist in spite of safeguards and thereby find the deficiencies of the current procurement processes and control mechanisms, (b) recommending appropriate corruption prevention methods for arresting the deficiencies in the Indian context. The recommendations following the case analyses are the need for comprehensive set of measures including strengthening the accountability, monitoring and whistleblower mechanisms, training of procurement officials and building a strong information system. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag, "A MIP model for scheduling India's General Elections and Police movement", OPSEARCH(Springer) (Oct–Dec 2014) 51(4):562–576. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s12597-013-0160-3 Conducting the General Elections for the 543 members of the Parliament of India across the 833 thousand polling stations spread over the 35 States is a mammoth exercise. Deployment of the Central Police Forces is essential to complement the role of the State police during the elections. However paucity of Central Police Forces necessitates the conduct of elections over stages. This paper proposes and demonstrates a MIP model to (a) schedule the elections with a minimum number of stages (b) sourcing the appropriate number of security personnel from the most convenient Central Police Forces bases (c)scheduling movement of security personnel between stages with the objective of minimizing men-miles. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag, "Public Procurement- case study of the Indian Railways", Journal of Institute of Public Enterprise (2013) Volume 36, Issue 1 & 2, Page 45-70. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2323257 Indian Railways is one of the world’s largest public sector organizations. Its network, traffic, organization and extent of vertical integration are gigantic. This paper undertakes a critical examination of its procurement process to understand the procedures and institutional mechanisms which have evolved over time for safeguarding institutional interests. The paper examines issues such as organizational structure, procurement organization, source selection methodology, procurement oversight and regulation and their impact on the economy, efficiency, transparency and accountability aspects of procurement. It is found that a unique combination of internal vigil, external oversight by independent bodies and organizational characteristics contribute to robust procurement processes. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag, "A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Optimal Design of Tidal Power Plants", Journal of The Institution of Engineers (India): Series B(Springer)(2013) Volume 94, Issue 1, Page 43-51. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s40031-013-0041-4. Awarded the "The Union Ministry of Energy-Department of Power Prize" for the best paper published on Power Development and Utilization at the 29th Indian Engineering Congress 2014. https://www.ieindia.org/NewsPDF/recipent/29th_IEC.pdf A dynamic programming algorithm is proposed and demonstrated on a test case to determine the optimum operating schedule of a barrage tidal power plant to maximize the energy generation over a tidal cycle. Since consecutive sets of high and low tides can be predicted accurately for any tidal power plant site, this algorithm can be used to calculate the annual energy generation for different technical configurations of the plant. Thus an optimal choice of a tidal power plant design can be made from amongst different design configurations yielding the least cost of energy generation. Since this algorithm determines the optimal time of operation of sluice gate opening and turbine gates opening to maximize energy generation over a tidal cycle, it can also be used to obtain the annual schedule of operation of a tidal power plant and the minute-to-minute energy generation, for dissemination amongst power distribution utilities. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Katta G.Murty(University of Michigan), "Organizing National Elections in India to Elect the 543 Members of the Lok Sabha", Algorithmic Operations Research 7(2013): 55–70. Available at http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/AOR/article/view/20395 & https://ssrn.com/abstract=2928689 There are 833 thousand polling stations in all of the 543 parliamentary constituencies spread over 35 states of India. On the day elections are being held in any one of these polling stations, a minimum of 4 Central Police Force(CPF) personnel must be deployed there, to maintain law and order and guarantee that voters can vote freely without being intimidated by anyone. As the number of CPF personnel available for this activity is limited, it is not possible to hold the Indian General elections on a single day over the whole country. So the set of 35 States of India is partitioned into a number of subsets, with elections in each subset of states being held on a single day. This partition is required to satisfy the constraints that the states in each subset are contiguous, and the subsets themselves must be contiguous. We present a method for organizing the Indian General Elections subject to these constraints, and minimizing the total number of election days required, and the total cost for the movement of CPF personnel involved. The method is based on the shortest Hamiltonian path problem, a tour segmentation problem defined in the paper, and the bipartite minimum cost flow problem. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag, Jeetendra Singh and Ved Mani Tiwari,"Choosing the appropriate project management structure, project financing, land acquisition and contractual process for Indian railway mega-projects: a case study of the Dedicated Freight Corridor project", Journal of Project, Program & Portfolio Management, 3 (2012): 39-54. Available at http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/pppm/article/view/2791/3487 & https://ssrn.com/abstract=2928686 A large number of railway mega-projects are planned or are under implementation for capacity augmentation, for serving the needs of trade, specific regions or industry sectors. Since transport capacity is one of the main levers of economic progress, it is essential that augmentation of transport capacity is not held up. It is therefore essential to choose the appropriate project management structure, project financing, land acquisition and contractual process to ensure design, construction and commissioning of projects without cost and time overruns. These choices have to be made keeping in view the context of the organisational technical capacity, financial capability, contractor capacity, and industry and trade growth pattern. This paper examines the various project management structures, methods of project financing, land acquisition and contractual processes along with their advantages and disadvantages. The paper takes the specific case of the Dedicated Freight Corridor project to examine the appropriateness of options. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Katta G. Murty(University of Michigan), "Diesel locomotive fueling problem (LFP) in railroad operations", 49 OPSEARCH(Springer)(2012):315–333. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s12597-012-0082-5 About 75 % of the world’s railroads operate with diesel fuel. Even though European railroads rely on electric traction to a large extent, US railroads rely mostly on diesel fuel (100 % of US freight is hauled by diesel locomotives). Like in other industries there is intense competition to keep costs low; and in railroad operations based on diesel locomotives, the cost of fuel and its delivery is the major component of the overall cost. Since the cost of fuel is highly location dependent (due to local taxes and transportation costs between supply and demand points), locomotive fueling problem discussed in this paper is a critical problem in railroad operations. Given: the set of yards, the set of trains to operate, the locomotive assignments to trains, and the fuel cost and capacity data; this problem deals with finding the fueling plan for the various trains to minimize the total cost of fueling the locomotives. We describe three different algorithms, two based on greedy method and one using MIP model, that we used to solve this problem and highlight the summary of solutions obtained by each of them for comparisons of these algorithms.

Conferences:

Papers in Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings: 

  • Ranjan Pal(MIT Sloan School of Management) and Bodhibrata Nag, "A Mathematical Theory to Price Cyber-Cat Bonds boosting IT/OT Security", INFORMS Winter Simulation Conference (December 2023) The density of enterprise cyber (re-)insurance markets to manage (aggregate) enterprise cyber-risk has been low enough to realize their potential to significantly improve cyber-security and consequently the cyber-reliability of (ICS) enterprise ecosystems. In this paper, we propose the use of catastrophic (CAT) bonds as a radical and alternative residual cyber-risk management methodology to alleviate the big supply-demand gap in the current cyber (re-)insurance industry, by boosting capital injection in the latter industry. Two important follow up questions arise: (i) when is it feasible for cyber (re-)insurers to invest in CAT bonds? and (ii) how can we price cyber-CAT bonds conditioned on the feasibility condition(s)? We focus on answering the second question pivoted upon an existential answer to the first. We propose a novel practically motivated information asymmetry (IA) driven cyber-CAT bond pricing model, built upon theories of financial stochastic processes and Monte Carlo simulations, in realistic arbitraged incomplete markets. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Ranjan Pal, "Simulation Optimization for Supply Chain Decision Making," INFORMS Winter Simulation Conference (December 2022) Supply chain design and optimization have been a subject of interest for academia and industry alike. We focus on stochastic and hybrid models in this paper since they closely approximate reality. This paper explains the structure of supply chains, decisions required to be taken in a typical supply chain, and models developed for supply chain design and optimization. The paper further explores optimization via simulation to solve stochastic and hybrid models, its applications in the supply chain domain and future research directions arising out of recent emphasis on sustainability, robustness and resilience of supply chains and the opportunities offered by advances in Industry 4.0, Machine Learning and Big Data. 
  • Simon J. E. Taylor(Brunel University, London), Wentong Cai(Nanyang Technological University), L. Jeff Hong(Fudan University), Bodhibrata Nag, Chew Ek Peng(National University of Singapore), and Claudia Szabo(University of Adelaide), "Simulation and Artificial Intelligence: A Foundation for a New, Reimagined Tomorrow?", INFORMS Winter Simulation Conference (December 2022) 
  • Anjan Ghosh and Bodhibrata Nag, "Re-engineering the Case Method for tomorrow," North American Case Research Association Conference(October 2022) 
  • Charles Light, Yixuan Wang, Ranjan Pal, and Bodhibrata Nag, "How do Smart Citizens Favor Personal Data Markets under Surveillance Capitalism?", INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS) Conference (June 2022) We investigate and rationalize how individuals in a surveilled developing economic society value a human-centric data economy (HCDE). We first design and conduct a non-online pilot field experiment on approximately 22500 human subjects across smart cities in India from 2014-2019, and collect data reflecting the impact of monetary incentives on these subjects to voluntarily trade their (personal) data in the digital surveillance age. Consequently, we study how various degrees of incentive influence subject preferences - both, when they are, or are not well-informed about the commercial malpractices their personal data might be subjected to. We analyze and rationalize (from the viewpoint of behavioral economics) two main observations in general for the Indian population: (i) despite being warned of the commercial malpractices associated with their personal data in the mobile and IoT age, they prefer to trade data for incentives, and (ii) the willingness of individuals to trade personal data is statistically heavy-tailed and hints at following a weak power-law. The broader social impact of such HCDEs lie on three fronts: (1) a society preferring HCDEs will likely enable high-quality personal data to be collected by online (social) applications in a trustworthy fashion that subsequently will catalyse a much-improved AI-driven multi-stakeholder targeted advertising business, (2) the GDP-centric macroeconomic inequality in a developing economy might considerably reduce due to online (social) application users earning from their personal data, and (3) much to the like of these application businesses, users will invest in increased time and meaningful attention to the former that will act as upward spiral feedbacks on improved personal data collection. 
  • Samir Maity, Bodhibrata Nag and Sushovan Khatua, "Leveraging Machine Learning of Indian Railways Public Procurement Data for Managerial Insights", International Conference on Data Analytics in Public Procurement and Supply Chain (June 2022)
  • Samir Maity, Bodhibrata Nag, and Sushovan Khatua, "Leveraging Machine Learning of Indian Railways Public Procurement Data for Managerial Insights", Chapter of book ‘Applications of Emerging Technologies and AI/ML Algorithms‘ (Springer, forthcoming) https://link.springer.com/book/9789819910182 
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan) and Bodhibrata Nag et.al, "How Do Humans Value Privacy in Smart Cities?", INFORMS Winter Simulation Conference (December 2021) The concept of a human-centric data economy (HCDE) in which an individual's data, used for e-commerce, should be paid for, is on the rise. However, HCDEs can only be successfully operational only if humans voluntarily prefer to trade their data, despite the privacy risks accompanying such a trade. In this paper, we investigate and rationalize how humans value their data privacy. We run a pilot non-online experiment in certain smart cities in India to study the impact of monetary incentives on the privacy preference of 22.5K human subjects. Through this experiment, we study (a) how various degrees of incentive influence human preference to voluntarily trade their data (a proxy to privacy) with the demand side of the digital economy - both, when they are, or are not well-informed in prior about the commercial malpractices their personal data might be subjected to, and (b) underlying social patterns that characterize these preferences. 
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), Bodhibrata Nag, Jonathan Crowcroft, Swades De, "Consensual Privacy Trading Will Improve Societal Privacy Welfare", INFORMS Conference on Security(February 2020) In this era of IoT/mobile apps, huge quantities of surveillance data about consumer activities offer opportunities for economic and societal value creation. However, they equally open up channels for consumer privacy breaches. In this talk we detail the need and modalities of consensual privacy trading – a pioneering idea we introduce (and mathematically validate) that allows economically efficiently trading consumer personal information with their consent and return benefits, rather than non-consensually ‘stealing’ this data, as many commercially motivated firms do. The major societal impact behind such an idea is the improvement in privacy welfare between consumers and data gatherers. 
  • Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), Leana Golubchik, Konstantinos Psounis, Jonathan Crowcroft, John Kelly, Bodhibrata Nag, "A Cautionary Look at Cyber-risk Management for Modern Cyber-infrastructures", INFORMS Conference on Security(February 2020) Service liability interconnections among modern IT/IoT-networked service organizations create potential channels for (catastrophic) cascading service disruptions due to cyber-risks posed by state-of-the-art DDoS, APT, and ransomware hacks. In this talk we discuss the role of the liability network topology and statistical cyber-risk distributions on the feasibility and effectiveness of the growing and much needed risk management services (e.g., cyber-insurance) for modern cyber/critical-infrastructures, and provide cautionary suggestions for the development of such markets for the welfare of society. 
  • Somu Gorai, Sanjeet Singh, Bodhibrata Nag, “Integrated Production Planning and Multi-echelon Inventory Placement for Dairy Products”, XXIII Annual International Conference of the Society of Operations Management (SOM 2019) 
  • Bodhibrata Nag(2013).Heavy Haul Corridor Selection and Service Design Models in Proceedings of 10th Heavy Haul International Conference,February 2013, New Delhi. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323265 Heavy haul corridors are capital intensive and are relatively expensive to maintain. It is therefore imperative that heavy haul corridors are chosen with care, such that sufficient traffic is available on the corridors to ensure adequate returns. The strategic choice will be dictated by projected pattern and volume of freight traffic, projected pattern of passenger traffic and terminal facilities. Various choices may be obtained with different rolling stock and locomotive capacity to obtain scenarios with existing and future fleet characteristics, as well as future terminal facilities. Further, tactical operating plans for networks with heavy haul corridors should be designed properly to ensure maximum utilization of such corridors with a given set of customer demands, rolling stock and locomotive size and capacity, terminal facilities and capacity of peripheral networks. Such operating plans which might span from a fortnight to three months, include decisions regarding routes, frequency of services, aggregation and disaggregation policies, empties repositioning policies and direct or consolidating train service policies. These operating plans may also depend on the service level committed to a customer, which is again tied to a particular pricing. This paper proposes two operations research based models: (i) a model for choosing a heavy haul corridor(s) within an existing network and (ii) a model for design of an optimal operating plan for an existing network with a designated heavy haul corridor(s). The models are further demonstrated on a hypothetical railroad network with test data. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Jeetendra Singh(2012).A multi-criteria approach for railway project portfolio selection in Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Transportation Planning & Implementation Methodologies for Developing Countries, December 2012, Mumbai. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323253 In an emerging economy, transport planners have a difficult task of allocating scarce and costly capital amongst the available shelf of railway projects to effectively meet the increasing demands for railway infrastructure. Hitherto, a single criterion such as IRR was being used for ranking and selection of railway projects; however of late, planners have realized the need to incorporate other economic and strategic criteria too in project portfolio selection. There is thus now a need for an analytical tool to assist the decision makers in systematically evaluating the options for optimal allocation of capital amongst railway projects, using various criteria simultaneously. This paper proposes a two-phase analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal solution (TOPSIS)-Global Criteria approach for the purpose, wherein AHP is used to determine the weights of each criterion based on the planners’ evaluation of their relative importance. A single objective function is then obtained using TOPSIS-Global Criteria approach, which is used to identify the optimal capital allocation amongst competing projects. The methodology is demonstrated on a test case of a shelf of railway projects to obtain the best project portfolio fund allocation within the available capital resources. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag(2006).Survey of Operations Research Applications in Railways in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, August 2006, Jaipur Bodhibrata Nag(2006).Facility Location on Railway Networks in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, August 2006, Jaipur Bodhibrata Nag and Manabendra Nath Pal(2004).Optimal Design of Timetables to maximize schedule reliability and minimize energy consumption, rolling stock and crew deployment in Proceedings of 2nd UIC(International Congress of Railways) Energy Efficiency Conference,February 2-4, 2004, Paris. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323254and http://www.uic.org/IMG/pdf/Powerpoint-nag-2.pdf 

Papers presented in conferences:

  • Bodhibrata Nag(October 2010).Operations Research Opportunities in the Railroad Industry. Paper presented at 12th Annual Midwest Optimization Meeting, Wayne State University, Detroit 
  • Bodhibrata Nag, Manabendra Nath Pal and Sourav Basu(September 2008).Location of intermodal terminals for freight movement in an existing rail network: a strategic planning model. Paper presented at XIV Latin Ibero-American Congress on Operations Research, Cartagena de Indias. 
  • Bodhibrata Nag (October 2007). Analytic Modeling of Railway Capacity. Paper presented at 8th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, Bangkok 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Shekhar Chaudhuri (November 2006). Indian Management Education: Perspective & Challenges. Paper presented at International Conference on Management Education, Bangalore 
  • Bodhibrata Nag(April 2005). Optimal Design of Timetables to maximize schedule reliability, Paper presented at LRDSS Academia-Industry Partnership Workshop, Vadodara 

Invited talks:

  • "Lean Management", Talk given at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, Ministry of Railways (2023) 
  • "On Academic Publishing", The Economics Society ,Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi(2023) 
  • Invited panelist for a discussion on ""Shaping the Future of Management Education in Sustainable Emerging Economies", IIT Roorkee (2022) 
  • “Quality Management in Loco Sheds”, Talk given at Indian Railway Institute of Electrical Engineering, Ministry of Railways (2021) 
  • "The Business of Railways", Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur(2019).
  • "Freight Network Design and Tanker Scheduling", Talk given at Indian Maritime University, Kolkata Campus(2018). 
  • "Effective Leadership -a key for project success", Talk given at National Seminar on Objectives & Challenges of Project Management organized by Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers and Indian Chemical Council, Kolkata(2017) 
  • "Building an Impactful Academic Career", IIM Rohtak(2016). 
  • "Modal Shift- Infrastructure and Policy Imperatives". Talk given at EU-India Research & Innovation Partnership for Efficient and Sustainable Freight Transportation (REINVEST) International Workshop, IIT Bombay (2016) 
  • "Focused Teams & Enlightened Leadership-the key to successful projects". Keynote address given at IBM's Project Management Sharenet (2014) 
  • "Two Greedy Heuristics for the Diesel Locomotive Fuelling Problem in Railroad Operations". Talk given at National Workshop on Optimization and its Application hosted by ORSI-Durgapur Chapter(2013) 
  • "Academia-Industry collaborations: lessons from the US". Talk given at Ministry of Human Resource Development's Eastern Regional Workshop on Industry-Academia Collaboration for Greater Employability, IIEST(2013) 
  • "Operations Research Applications in Railways". Talk given at Industrial and Operations Engineering Department of College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor(2010). 
  • "Leading High-Performing R&D Project Teams". Talk given at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre(Department of Atomic Energy), Kolkata(2010) 
  • "Supply Chain Management in Retail- the road ahead". Talk given at Retail Estate Summit organized by Indian Chamber of Commerce, Kolkata(2008) 
  • "Operations Research Applications on Railways". Talk given at Institute of Rail Transport, Ministry of Railways,New Delhi(2007) 
  • "Equipment Management Systems- Latest trends". Talk given at 7th Indian Army Management Studies Board Meeting at College of Military Engineering, Pune(2007).
  • "State of Logistics in India". Keynote address at National Seminar on Supply Chain Management, Visakhapatnam(2007). 
  • Bodhibrata Nag and Shekhar Chaudhuri (October 2006).Achieving Excellence with Equity in Management Education in India. Talk given at AIMS Directors & Deans Round Table, Kolkata. 
  • "Petri Nets: Theory & Applications". Tutorial Session at 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, Jaipur(2006).

Research Interests:

Application of simulation and analytic techniques for planning, design and operations of energy, transportation, logistics systems and cyber security 

Society Memberships: 

  • Elected Senior Member,Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 
  • Elected Fellow & Chartered Engineer, Institution of Engineers (India) 
  • Life Member, All India Management Association (AIMA) 
  • Life Member, Institute of Rail Transport 
  • Life Member,Association of Indian Management Scholars 
  • Life Senior Member,Operations Research Society of India 
  • Life Member,Indian Institute of Public Administration 
  • Member, Public Procurement Professionals Network 
  • Member,International Association for Railway Operations Research 
     

Books/Book Chapters:

Books: 

Articles/Cases:

Working Papers:

  • “Algorithms for Locomotive Fuelling Problem”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 663
  • “Determinants of profitability of US Class I Freight Railroads”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 679 
    http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2342470 
  • “A dynamic programming algorithm for optimal design and operation of tidal power plants”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 680 
  • “Scheduling India’s General Elections”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 690 
  • “A MIP model for scheduling India’s General Elections and police movement”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 697 
  • “Public Procurement- a case study of the Indian Railways”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 698 
  • “The US Railroads- their evolution, structure and operations”, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 699 
  • A multi-criteria approach for railway project portfolio fund allocation, IIM Calcutta Working Paper 702 
  • "Heavy Haul Corridor Selection and Service Design Models", IIM Calcutta Working Paper 709
  • "Choosing the appropriate project management structure, project financing, land acquisition and contractual process for Indian railway mega-projects-a case study of the Dedicated Freight Corridor Project", IIM Calcutta Working Paper 715 
  • "Combating Corruption in Indian Public Procurement- some exploratory case studies", IIM Calcutta Working Paper 755 
  • "A multi- (depot, path, vehicle) 4D travelling purchaser problem for perishable and breakable items under disruption through quantum-inspired memetic algorithm", IIM Calcutta Working Paper 819