Research Areas at the Chair of Supply Chain Management and Operations

Research Areas

Supply Network Planning

Within the process of Supply Network Planning strategic decisions regarding the design of a supply network are taken. This includes structural decisions regarding the number, size, location and configuration of production and distribution facilities within the supply network as well as policies on the management of the entire network.

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Advanced Planning and Scheduling

APS covers conceptual frameworks and OR-based methods as well as corresponding information systems for integrated planning of the entire supply chain at the operational level. Our research agenda is focused on planning concepts and decision support models for performance and risk optimisation in production and supply chain management.

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Inventory Management

Basically, all effort on inventory management is dedicated to answering two questions: When to order and how much to order. In general, a decision maker will pursue three possibly contrary objections: Low inventory holding costs, low purchase costs and high inventory availability, or rather an inventory availability that satisfies the need of the subsequent production, distribution or transportation process.

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Performance Analysis of Production Systems

Performance analysis is required to provide a basis for decisions on the design or redesign of production facilities. Computer simulations as well as analytic methods are used to perform this task.

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Logistics in Retail and Consumer Goods Industries

The further development of OR-models, their practical need, and the growing availability of data motivates an increasing number of scientists and practitioners to intensify research on demand and supply-related issues in consumer-facing industries. We research on efficiency and performance improvements of logistical systems in the area of retail and consumer goods industries. It covers conceptual frameworks and OR-based methods as well as corresponding planning systems for integrated demand and supply planning from the consumer and outlet perspective. We focus on optimization concepts and decision support models from strategic to operational level such as integrative retail logistics, supply chain planning or assortment decision or shelf space planning.

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Automotive Industry

There is no other industry that has been covered as well in academic literature as the automotive industry. However, due to the complexity and the dynamics of this business the field of research is diverse and new problems emerge. Our chair mainly focuses on issues between the OEM and suppliers and on problems of production planning in the context of supply chain management.

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