Interview with Wenge Zhu

November 2021

My undergraduate major was in Electrical Engineering. However, Instead of becoming an Engineer I continued to the graduate school to get my MBA since I realized I am more interested in economics and business.  I had been working in the industry for many years ranging from project management, production management, to business consulting before I eventually went back to graduate school to get my Ph.D. in Operations & Supply Chain Management at the University of Texas at Austin. I found that teaching and doing research more enjoyable than climbing the corporate ladder.

My original interest of research is the innovation in products and services, such as new product development, in a global supply chain. Recently, I was also working with colleagues in TOM department to study the sustainability in the new circular economy by combining my previous focus on innovation and supply chain.

In recent years, I was working on incorporating SAP in our curriculum, and I am the SAP faculty coordinator in Cal Poly Pomona. Besides occasionally teaching the two business cores (TOM 3010 and 3020), I am now primarily teaching enterprise resource planning and business logistics.