The Digital Supply Chain Challenge

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ralf W. Seifert is a recognized scholar and executive educator in the domain of supply chain management. As Professor of Operations Management at IMD business school for the last 20 years, Ralf has designed and directed numerous public and company-specific general management programs. He is currently director of the Digital Supply Chain Management program.

Based on his work with companies, Ralf has co-authored two books and more than 40 case studies, several of which have won international case writing awards. Ralf continues to actively research issues of supply chain strategy and execution and regularly publishes in both leading academic journals and practitioner-oriented outlets. He is also a tenured professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where he has held the Chair of Technology and Operations Management (TOM) since 2003. Prior to joining IMD, Ralf studied and worked in Germany, Japan and the US. While in the US, he consulted for Hewlett-Packard on its omnichannel strategy and served as teaching and research assistant at Stanford University. Ralf earned his PhD and MS degrees in management science at Stanford University (US) specializing in supply chain operations. His dissertation back in 2000 focused on modeling internet-enabled opportunities in supply chain operation. He also holds a Diplom Ingenieur degree in mechanical engineering with specialization in production management from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and a Master’s degree in integrated manufacturing systems engineering from North Carolina State University. In addition, he spent one year as a Visiting Scholar studying operations research at Waseda University in Tokyo.

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