Stanley Lim

Stanley Lim is an associate professor in the Department of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University. He is the co-director of the Broad Food Access & Supply Chain Technology (FAST) Lab and a faculty affiliate of the Evolution and Future of Work Research Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from the University of Cambridge, a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.B.A. from Warwick Business School.

Stanley is an empirical operations economist. His research examines the economics of distribution services in downstream, or so-called “last-mile,” supply chains under operational and societal constraints. Methodologically, he employs causal inference and large-scale field data, complemented by analytical and optimization models, to analyze operational trade-offs and welfare implications. His work has applications to online and brick-and-mortar retail, local package delivery, and food supply chains, with a focus on food waste reduction and rescue efforts. By adopting a cross-domain perspective that integrates operations management, marketing, and economics with customer behavior analytics, his research advances both the theory and practice of retail logistics and provides organizations with actionable guidance on how to distribute their products and services to end consumers efficiently under various conditions.

A central theme of his research is how firms create value by reducing consumers’ search and transaction costs through four core distribution services—the “four A’s”: accessibility, availability, assurance, and assortment. His work deepens understanding of these mechanisms in both digital and nondigital retail contexts, with implications for last-mile delivery performance, retail operations design, and food system efficiency. Recognized for his data-driven, interdisciplinary approach, and strong grounding in real-world applications, his research has been honored as a finalist for the INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize and as a semi-finalist for the INFORMS Innovative Applications in Analytics Award. He regularly provides expert commentary on these topics for major media outlets, including Fox News, the Associated Press, NBCUniversal, The Detroit News, and Detroit Free Press. 

Based on this research agenda, Stanley has developed analytical models for store network and facility location design, service zoning, workload and job assignments, volunteer management, and new service policies. His work includes models that predict failed delivery attempts and integrate those predictions into routing decisions, estimate the opportunity cost of product stockouts for inventory planning, determine optimal return windows for consumer return policies, and evaluate spatial competition to guide store market area design. He has also studied the effects of contract terms on retailer-supplier bargaining power and their economic outcomes, the relationship between delivery workload and performance, the impact of subscription programs on consumer behaviors, and consumers' sensitivities to lead times and their product return behaviors across channels. 

Stanley's research appears in Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He serves as an associate editor for a special issue on responsible retail operations at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and has previously co-edited a special issue on innovations, technologies, and the economics of last-mile operations, as well as served as an associate editor for a special issue on omni-channel retailing at Journal of Operations Management. He is an active reviewer for leading journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Decision Sciences Journal, Naval Research Logistics, and Service Science. For his reviewing activities, he has received multiple honors, including the 2024 Decision Sciences Journal Best Reviewer Award, 2023 Management Science Distinguished Service Award, 2024 and 2023 M&SOM Meritorious Service Award, and the 2025 and 2022 Academy of Management's Operations and Supply Chain Management Division Outstanding Reviewer Award.

Stanley regularly organizes and chairs sessions on empirical retail operations and economics of retail distribution services at INFORMS and POMS annual conferences. He served as Chair of Research (Research Tracks) for the 2024 Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference and has co-chaired several research tracks, including Empirical Research in Operations Management (2025 POMS), Retail Operations (2024 POMS), the POM-Economics Interface (2023 POMS), and the Supply Chain Management (2023 DSI). He currently serves as President of the POMS College of Supply Chain Management, is a member of the 2025 and 2026 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize Committee, and serves as Co-Chair of the Supply Chain Management track at the 2026 POMS Annual Conference and Co-Chair of the Agricultural and Food Supply Chains track at the 2026 DSI Annual Conference. He welcomes opportunities for new collaborations.

*** I am actively looking for post-docs/visiting PhDs/research assistants to work with me across causal inference, structural estimation, optimization, and advanced machine learning with applications in retail, logistics, and food supply chains. Please contact me if you are interested. ***

Huang, J., Lim, S.F.W.T. and Akturk, M.S. 2024. Third-party delivery platforms. Management Science (Under revision after major revision decision).Wang, L., Lim, S.F.W.T. and Rabinovich, E. 2024. Stem distance and impact on courier choices. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (Under revision after major revision decision).Akturk, S., Chintapalli, P. and Lim, S.F.W.T. 2024. Return window and opportunistic consumers in retail. Production and Operations Management (Under second-round review after major revision decision).Lim, S.F.W.T. 2024. Multichannel return behavior. Production and Operations Management (Under review after major revision decision).Lim, S.F.W.T. and Su, X. 2025. Temporal bracketing and performance incentives: Evidence from a field experiment in last-mile delivery. Management Science (Under revision after reject-and-resubmit decision).Carlsson, J., Lim, S.F.W.T., Liu, S. and Yu, H. 2025. Data-driven delivery zoning for last-mile logistics. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.Zhao, Y., Luo, Z., Lim, S.F.W.T., Chen, C. and Sim, M. 2025. Service oriented considerate routing: Data, predictions and robust decisions. Management Science, forthcoming.Lim, S.F.W.T. 2025. How grocery retail innovations change customer behavior. MIT Sloan Management Review, 67(2): 23–25.Lim, S.F.W.T., Rabinovich, E., Lee, S. and Park, S. 2025. Estimating stockout costs and optimal stockout rates: A case on the management of ugly produce inventory. Management Science, 71(4): 3106–3126.
Lim, S.F.W.T. 2024. Cutting last-mile delivery costs: New tactics can boost profitability and satisfaction with subscription services. MIT Sloan Management Review, 66(2): 15–17.Lim, S.F.W.T., Gao, F. and Tan, T.F. 2024. Channel changes choice: An empirical study about omnichannel demand sensitivity to fulfillment lead time. Management Science, 70(5): 2954–2975.Lim, S.F.W.T. 2023. Research: Why so many packages don’t get delivered. Harvard Business Review. Available  at https://hbr.org/2023/11/research-why-so-many-packages-dont-get-delivered.Lim, S.F.W.T., Wang, Q. and Webster, S. 2023. Do it right the first time: Vehicle routing with home delivery attempt predictors. Production and Operations Management, 32(4): 1262–1284.
Lim, S.F.W.T., Richards, T.J., Rabinovich, E. and Choi, M. 2022. Scan based trading and bargaining equilibrium: A structural estimation of supply chain profit. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 24(4): 2328–2348.Lim, S.F.W.T., Rabinovich, E., Park, S. and Hwang, M. 2021. Shopping activity at warehouse club stores and its competitive and network density implications. Production and Operations Management, 30(1): 28–46.Lim, S.F.W.T. and Winkenbach, M. 2019. Configuring the last-mile in business-to-consumer e-retailing. California Management Review, 61(2): 132–154.