Overview & Milestones

Overview & Milestones

KLU educates leaders and change-makers with strong operations and analytical mindsets, with a skillset built upon our focus areas in digitalization, sustainability, and entrepreneurship. The value of, e.g., supply chain management and logistics continues to grow significantly and now accounts for more than 10 percent of both the world's GDP and CO2 emissions, making them highly relevant topics. By combining management and leadership studies with data science and information technology, our graduates are perfectly equipped to change the world responsibly and sustainably.

We offer a wide range of courses and state-accredited bachelor, master, MBA, and PhD degree programs that are fully accredited and repeatedly ranked among the best. All our programs are taught in English by world-class professors, trained themselves at the world's best universities, actively conducting research and efficiently mobilizing their cutting-edge findings in the classroom. KLU is the world's leading university advancing logistics, supply chain, and operations management through research and teaching.

Outside the classroom, students' competencies and skills are developed further through integrated internships, international exchange studies at one of our partner universities, such as Stellenbosch in South Africa, Tongji in China, or the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, a dynamic student life, and customized career coaching. With our long-standing corporate partners and employers, such as BMW, Lufthansa, and McKinsey, KLU graduates have highly impactful and rewarding careers.

What better time than now to join KLU and learn from the best and the brightest in the field?

At KLU, we believe that a strong operations mindset is your key to success. All our programs will teach you how to acquire such a mindset and strengthen the skills that allow you to excel in your future career.

Almost everything that you see around you is brought to you by a supply chain. Logistics and SCM do permeate everything. Why is that the case? And how can you use it to make a positive and sustainable impact in this world?

KLU Milestones

  • 2010: Founding and state-recognition of KLU by Germany via the Hamburg Senate
  • 2012: KLU is awarded the Erasmus University Charter by the European Union
  • 2013: Opening of KLU’s current campus in the HafenCity by current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
  • 2017: As one of very few private German universities, KLU is granted the right to confer PhD degrees
  • 2020: 10th anniversary under the motto of "10 Years of Award-Winning Teaching and Research"
  • 2021: KLU rated Best University Worldwide by Studyportals, solely based on student evaluations
     

Kühne Foundation

KLU is the flagship project of the Kühne Foundation, set up by the Kühne family in 1976, in the logistics field. Since its establishment by the foundation’s benefactor Klaus-Michael Kühne, KLU has set itself the task of being heavily involved in the professionalization of the logistics industry and its sustainable development and digital transformation. It furthermore aims to draw attention to the considerable importance of logistics and supply chain management for the global economy, while striving to highlight its significance as a management function. In addition to supporting KLU, the Kühne Stiftung finances a professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), the Center for International Logistics Networks at TU Berlin, a logistics institute at Tongji University in Shanghai, and the Kühne Center for Logistics Management at WHU’s Otto Beisheim School of Management. The foundation also supports research in medical science and sponsors humanitarian, charitable, and cultural projects. 

KLU mission statement

KLU Vision

To be the University for Logistics and Leadership driving the world’s welfare through focused research and education.

KLU Mission

To increase the significance and understanding of Logistics and Leadership in research and education, in industry and society. In line with this,

  • we produce state-of-the-art research of highest international standard with high impact and outreach,
  • we provide high-standard, research-based education and prepare our students to become responsible leaders that have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to seek and create positive impact within their organizations, between organizations, on the debate in the field, and, in general, on a sustainable transformation of our global economy and society,
  • we support the industry and society at large in successfully mastering current and future challenges, based on our research and education.

KLU Values

  • we rely on the Hanseatic characteristics of our hometown Hamburg: cosmopolitanism, reliability and networking skills,
  • we value internationality and diversity as enrichment and source of inspiration,
  • we embrace fact-based, data and evidence-driven decision-making,
  • we are a people’s place cultivating an atmosphere of collegiality and community, mutual trust and understanding,
  • we foster ethical behavior and an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit.

How to find KLU