Hau Lee | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Institution | Stanford University |
Field | Operations management Supply chain management Value chain innovations |
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1983) London School of Economics (M.Sc., 1975) University of Hong Kong (B.Soc.Sc., 1974) |
Website | www |
Hau L. Lee is the Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.[1] Lee was among the earliest scholars to study supply chain management, being extensively cited for his seminal work on the bullwhip effect in supply chains[2][3][4][5][6] and the "triple-A supply chain."[7] His research has also explored supply chain sustainability and value chain innovations.[8][9][10]
Lee is an elected Fellow of all three important professional societies of operations management scholars, including the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS),[11] the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society (MSOM),[12] and the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS).[13] In 2010, he was inducted to the National Academy of Engineering "for contributions demonstrating the impact of information-sharing on supply chain design and management."[14]
Hau Lee earned his Bachelor of Social Science degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Hong Kong in 1974, M.Sc. in Operational Research from the London School of Economics in 1974, and PhD in Operations Research from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.[15]
Lee joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1983 as an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, was promoted to a tenured associate professor in 1986, and became a full professor in 1991. He was named Thomas Ford Faculty Scholar at the Stanford University School of Engineering in 1993, and Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor in 1996. In 1998, Lee moved to the Stanford Graduate School of Business to become a Professor of Operations, Information and Technology Management. He currently serves as Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology Management. At Stanford University, Lee co-directs the Value Chain Innovation Initiative[16] and the Powering Digital Value Chains program.[17]
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology conferred an Honorary Doctor of Engineering degree on Lee in 2006 in recognition of his status as "the global pioneer in the study of supply chain management."[3] In 2008, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam in recognition of his "enormous achievements in the fields of global supply chains and supply chain management."[4] He received an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from the University of Macau in 2021, honoring him as "the father of supply chain management."[18]
Lee has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Management Science, a Department Editor of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and President of the Production and Operations Management Society.
Internationally known for his research on the bullwhip effect in supply chains, Lee was among the earliest scholars to study supply chain management.[19][20] His research has also examined value chain innovations[21] and sustainability.[22]
His co-authored paper, “Information Distortion in a Supply Chain: The Bullwhip Effect,”[5] published in Management Science in 1997, has been voted as one of the ten most influential papers in the history of the journal,[23] with more than 6,000 citations as of 2022.[24] The bullwhip effect refers to a supply-chain phenomenon in which inventory swings more dramatically in response to changes in consumer demand as one moves up the supply chain. According to Lee's research, the bullwhip effect can be attributed to four different factors: decentralization, poor communication, local optimization, and supply chain opacity.[6]
In a 2004 Harvard Business Review article,[7] Lee proposed the "triple-A supply chain" theory, which has become one of the best cited thought frameworks in supply chain management.[25] The theory argues that agility, adaptability, and alignment are three key success factors in global supply chains. Lee wrote,
Hau Lee, "The Triple-A Supply Chain," Harvard Business Review (October 2004) .
Lee has served as a consultant with companies such as Accenture, Apple Inc., Applied Materials, Booz Allen Hamilton, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, Dow Chemical Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Esquel Group, FedEx, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, McKesson Corporation, Microsoft, Monsanto, Motorola, Nortel, National Institutes of Health, Nokia, Oracle Corporation, Philips, Rio Tinto, Siemens, Starbucks, Samsung, United States Navy, and Xerox.[3][1] He has served as an independent non-executive director for several public and private companies.
In 1999, Lee co-founded DemandTec,[2] which went public on NASDAQ in 2007.[26] He was the founding chairman of SCM World, which was acquired by Gartner in 2016.[27]