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Prof. Dr. Joern Meissner

Professor of Supply Chain Management & Pricing Strategy

Dr. Joern Meissner is Professor of Supply Chain Management & Pricing Strategy at Kühne Logistics University. Professor Meissner holds a PhD and a Master’s Degree in Management Science from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University (Columbia Business School) in New York City and a Diploma in Business from the University of Hamburg. His research spans a wide field of study, including the areas of Supply Chain Management (SCM), Pricing Strategy and Revenue Management. His work has been published in various prestigious journals including Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), European Journal of Operational Research,  International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics and Naval Research Logistics.

Professor Meissner’s main research focus is the area of stochastic and dynamic decision-making, and in particular applications to logistics, manufacturing, supply chain management, and pricing strategy. The aim of his research is to develop and implement robust and efficient techniques to business problems in those domains. A common theme within his research is the use of mathematical optimization techniques such as dynamic programming to guide managers to make better business decisions. Currently, Professor Meissner pursues the following research streams:

• Global Supply Chain Optimization
  This research focuses on how to efficiently integrate suppliers, producers, and warehouses to produce and distribute the right quantity, at the right time and in the right place while maximizing the total supply chain profit and guaranteeing an appropriate service level. Research questions often focus on incentives for the business partners to align their individual behavior with the goals of the total supply chain.

• Improvements in Inventory Control
  Control of inventory is a complex task, in particular if it involves a large number of SKUs (stock-keeping units) with intermittent demand patterns, which make forecasting and inventory control very difficult. Due to the large amount of spare part SKUs held in many companies, it is often not possible to configure an inventory system manually for each part separately. Our research evaluates, for example, a sub-grouping of intermittent demand patterns by a categorization scheme and the quality of the resulting inventory control policies.

• Operations & Service Management
  Service management is integrated into supply chain management as the interface between sales/after-sales and the customer. The aim of high performance service management is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than supply chains concerned exclusively with finished goods. Companies often must accommodate inconsistent and uncertain demand by establishing more advanced information. A typical research question within this context is staffing of call centers or teller stations, for example.

• Pricing Strategy & Revenue Management
  Recent advances in pricing and revenue management have rapidly changed the environment in which firms operate. The Internet, the adoption of new information technologies, and other market forces are driving the need for more sophisticated pricing methodologies and techniques. Given the tremendous upside of better pricing strategies, more and more industries are adapting mathematical pricing models to their needs. Promising research directions include sophisticated models of consumer behavior, models including competition between different providers, and the evaluation of pricing mechanisms such as auctions. These are very important issues for today's managers and research in this area is promising from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

As a leading expert in the development of optimization algorithms for a variety of logistics, supply chain management and pricing problems, Professor Meissner is often consulted by industry professionals and helps firms apply his cutting-edge mathematical techniques to their current business problems. He frequently advises companies, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to emerging start-ups, on issues such as supply chain planning and pricing strategy. His current and past clients include British Telecom (BT), British Airways, Apple Europe, Pernod Ricard, Promethean, TUI, The Co-Operative, Littlewoods, Virgin Trains, Virgin Cargo and SAP Germany, among others.

Professor Meissner is a passionate and enthusiastic teacher. He believes that grasping an idea is only half of the fun; conveying it to others makes it whole. At his previous position at Lancaster University Management School, he taught the MBA Core course in Operations Management and originated three new MBA Electives: Advanced Decision Models, Supply Chain Management, and Revenue Management. He has also lectured at the University of Hamburg, the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL), and the University of Mannheim. Professor Meissner offers a variety of Executive Education courses aimed at business professionals, managers, leaders, and executives who strive for professional and personal growth.

In the past, Professor Meissner has also been a successful entrepreneur. He founded Manhattan Review, a global test preparation and admissions consultancy, during his time at Columbia Business School. More recently, he established Lancaster Executive, a provider of executive education programs for senior managers.

For more details about Professor Joern Meissner, including downloads of research articles and white papers, please visit his academic homepage at http://www.meiss.com.

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