Professor Yufeng Zhang

Department of Management
Chair in Operations Management
Director MSc AI in Management
Turing Fellow

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 6695
Email: zhangys@bham.ac.uk

Address: Birmingham Business School
University House, University of Birmingham
116 Edgbaston Park Road
Birmingham
B15 2TY
United Kingdom

Yufeng Zhang is Professor of Operations Management at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham. Yufeng’s work aims to help companies cope with complex challenges and opportunities in managing global network operations with a primary focus on sustainability, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and engineering innovation. He is Director for MSc AI in Management, Founder of AI Management Lab, and Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.

Qualifications

PhD, Engineering (University of Cambridge)
MSc/Dipl-Ing, Global Production Engineering (Technical University of Berlin)
BEng, Mechanical Engineering & Automation (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
BEng, International Finance (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
PG Cert in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Biography

Teaching

Yufeng is leader of Operations Management and Supply Chain Management modules for UG, MSc, MBA and Executive MBA programmes. He received the University’s award for excellence in teaching and learning in 2013. He currently teaches the following modules

Artificial Intelligence in Business (UG & PG)
Supply Chain Technology and Innovation (PG)

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Zhang supervises PhD projects in the following areas:

Managing international engineering and manufacturing networks
Operations in emerging economies
Supply chain management and global value chains
Service engineering and the internationalisation of engineering services
Sustainable industrial systems
Technology commercialisation and emerging industries

Other activities

Head of the Department of Management from 2022 to 2024
Head of the Procurement and Operations Management Group from 2018 to 2021
Deputy Lead for Research and Excellence Framework (REF2021) from 2018 to 2022
Director of Business Programmes with Engineering, Sciences, Law and Languages from 2010 to 2017.
Scientific Coordinator of Europe China High Value Engineering Networks (EC-HVEN) from 2012 to 2016.
Distinguished Fellow of Henan Province (2019)
Changjiang Chair Professor (2021)
Turing Ethics Committee Reviewer (2022-5)
Scientific Advisor for Innovate UK BridgeAI (2024-5)
External Examiner for Aston, Cambridge, DTU, Exeter, Hongkong Polytech, Mauritius, Nottingham, Queen Belfast, and Warwick Universities.
Board Member of the China Institute.
Board Member of the European Operations Management Association.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Shi, X, Shi, Y, Zhang, Y & Liu, Z 2025, 'Harnessing the Power of Quasi-Supply Chains: Toward an Ecosystem Perspective for Transformative Supply Chain Management', The Journal of Supply Chain Management, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 14-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12335

Ambituuni, A, Amoozad Mahdiraji, H, Enang, I & Zhang, Y 2025, 'Project control practices to enable sustainable project management', International Journal of Managing Projects in Business .

He, H, Zhan, Y, Huo, B, Zhang, Y & Shi, X 2025, 'The impact of national centralized drug procurement policy on firm performance: Evidence from Chinese pharmaceutical firms', Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, vol. 200, 104225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2025.104225

Zhang, Y, Zhang, T & Yang, Z 2024, 'Leveraging digitalization and servitization to improve firms’ financial performance', Production Planning & Control: The Management of Operations, vol. 35, no. 15, pp. 2007-2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537287.2023.2229263

Muniz Jr., J, Zhang, Y, Wintersberger, D & Ramirez, P 2024, 'Social systems for future manufacturing framework: An overarching view of people, organization and society', Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineering Part B Journal of Engineering Manufacture. https://doi.org/10.1177/09544054241248865

Shi, X, Zhang, Y & Wang, Z 2024, 'Sustainable Value-Sharing Mechanisms of the Industrial Internet of Things Platforms: A Case Study of Haier’s Service-Oriented Transformation', Sustainability, vol. 16, no. 11, 4814. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16114814

Li, X, Esfahbodi, A & Zhang, Y 2024, 'The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation on Enterprises’ Financial Performance: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies', Sustainability, vol. 16, no. 5, 1848. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16051848

Chen, A, Lin, Y, Mariani, M, Shou, Y & Zhang, Y 2023, 'Entrepreneurial growth in digital business ecosystems: An integrated framework blending the knowledge-based view of the firm and business ecosystems', Journal of Technology Transfer, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 1628-1653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-023-10027-9

Esfahbodi, A, Zhang, Y, Liu, Y & Geng, D 2023, 'The fallacy of profitable green supply chains: the role of green information systems (GIS) in attenuating the sustainability trade-offs ', International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 255, 108703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2022.108703

Engelseth, P, Törnroos, J-Å & Zhang, Y 2020, 'Interdependency in coordinating networked maintenance and modification operations', Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management . https://doi.org/10.1108/JMTM-08-2019-0300

Liu, T, Liu, H, Zhang, Y, Song, Y, Su, Y & Zhu, Y 2020, 'Linking governance structure and sustainable operations of Chinese manufacturing firms: the moderating effect of internationalization', Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 253, 119949. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119949

Li, T, He, T, Wang, Z & Zhang, Y 2020, 'SDF-GA: a service domain feature-oriented approach for manufacturing cloud service composition', Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 681–702. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-019-01472-1

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Esfahbodi, A & Zhang, Y 2020, Effects of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) Practices on Performance Outcomes in UK Manufacturing Industry: The Moderating Role of Green Information Systems. in European Operations Management Association: EurOMA 27. vol. 1, pp. 592-602. https://doi.org/https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/mediacentre/wmgevents/euroma2020/proceedings/1936_exordo-euroma2020-version-1.pdf

Esfahbodi, A & Zhang, Y 2020, Sustainable supply chain management in developed vs. emerging economies: evidence from the UK and China’s manufacturing industry. in S Hashmi & IA Choudhury (eds), Encyclopedia of Renewable and Sustainable Materials. 1st edn, vol. 5, Elsevier, pp. 537-549. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813195-4.11506-8

Conference contribution

Zhang, Y 2021, Digital Transformation and the Micro-foundations. in EurOMA 2021 Proceedings. pp. 1-10, 28th EurOMA Conference, Berlin, Germany, 4/07/21.

View all publications in research portal