• Technology advances and competitive pressure have shortened the life cycles for many products and drastically increase the penalty of holding obsolete finished goods inventories. Standard planning methods lead to high forecasting uncertainty and - as a consequence - to high safety inventories. In this context, an appropriate service level is of major interest. We propose a new model for the analysis of alternative pricing strategies and their effects on the service level.
• We develop dynamic models that can be used to evaluate supply chain process improvements, e. g. different forecast methods. We will define and apply a robustness criterion to enable the comparison of different process alternatives. This criterion should help managers to reduce risks and furthermore variability by applying robust process improvements. Furthermore we will be able to demonstrate with our research results that the bullwhip effect is an important but not the only performance measure that should be used to evaluate supply chain process improvements.

• In particular we investigate the opportunities and challenges for improving the performance of supply chain processes by coordinated application of inventory management and capacity management. We will illustrate our approach by supplier companies in different industries. Using process simulation we will be able to demonstrate how the coordinated application of methods from inventory management and from capacity management result in improved performance measures of both intraorganizational (costs) and interorganizational (service level) objectives.

• We develop a procurement model and the framework for performance evaluation of procurement in a dynamic environment. The customer company may hedge against supply uncertainties by procurement contracts, by holding speculative inventories and/or by using alternative modes of transport including intermodal transport. Based on the procurement costs, transport costs and inventory costs, the performance of different procurement strategies will be compared by using process simulation. Moreover managerial guidelines will be derived for the selection of the most appropriate procurement strategy according to the term structure, the composition (portfolio or not) and the transport mode.

• Quality management concepts try to reduce operational risks, especially failures which are caused by human behavior, inadequate business processes, machine breakdowns, etc. Therefore, over the last decades, quality management systems have been used to manage supply in many industries (automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, etc.), but this is not far reaching in the context of supply chain management. Now, our goal is to extend customer focus to companyspanning processes (i.e., supply chain processes). The optimization of the flows of goods, information and funds is not limited to one's own organization, but it concerns each firm involved in fulfilling a customer order.
• Since September 2001 a lot of research work has been done in the field of supply chain risks and security. In this context quality management concepts are very helpful. It is possible to differentiate between disruption risk (e.g., terror attacks) and process risks (quality problems, delivery problems, etc). In particular, we will focus our research work on process risks. Furthermore, we will show that higher supply chain security causes also lower total supply chain cost. We will demonstrate this with quantitative models based on empirical data of specific case companies, e.g. in the food industry.

• High performance manufacturing: The research teams (Universities in the USA, Germany, Finnland, Sweden, Austria, Japan, etc.) have collected data from more than 300 manufacturing plants. The plants are from machinery, electrical & electronics, and automobile industries.
• Global manufacturing research: The research groups (Universities in the USA, South Korea, Sweden, Austria Hungary, etc.) have collected data from more than 200 manufacturing companies. The companies are from different industries without any specific focus.
• Through systematic study and research, the research groups/teams aim to improve manufacturing processes and supply chain processes through the development of theory and dissemination of results. By sharing ideas, results, and concepts with research colleagues and manufacturing executives, the research groups/teams serve to strengthen the linkage between research and practice. Based on these empirical data we will be able to answer research questions in the field of lead time reduction, outsourcing, forecasting, supply chain security, etc.

Link to my publications