Hau Lee’s research focuses on supply chain management, work that addresses how to get products or services to their destination by managing the flow of materials, information, and money. His research has resulted, among other things, in the building of computer models for industrial implementation, as well as in the development of strategies and operational concepts for practitioners.

Hau L. Lee is the Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His areas of specialization include supply chain management, information technology, global logistics system design, inventory planning, and manufacturing strategy. He is the founding and current co-director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, an industry-academic consortium to advance the theory and practice of global supply chain management.  He is also the faculty director of the Stanford Institute for Innovations in Developing Economies.

Professor Lee has published widely in journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Supply Chain Management Review, IIE Transactions, and Interfaces, etc. He has served on the editorial boards of many international journals, such as Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Supply Chain Management Review, Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Production and Operations Management. From 1997-2003, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Management Science.

Professor Lee was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.  He received the Harold Lardner Prize for International Distinction in Operations Research, Canadian Operations Research Society, 2003. He was elected a Fellow of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, INFORMS, 2001; Production and Operations Management Society, 2005; and INFORMS, 2005. In 2006, he was President of the Production and Operations Management Society. His article, “The Triple-A Supply Chain,” was the Second Place Winner of the McKinsey Award for the Best Paper in 2004 in the Harvard Business Review. In 2004, his coauthored paper in 1997, “Information Distortion in a Supply Chain: The Bullwhip Effect,” was voted as one of the 10 most influential papers in the history of Management Science.

Professor Lee has consulted extensively in the public and private sectors. He is a co-founder of DemandTec, which went public in 2007. He is on the board and advisory board of several logistics services and supply chain software companies. He has also given executive training workshops on supply chain management and global logistics in Asia, Europe, and America.

Professor Lee obtained his BSocSc degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Hong Kong in 1974, his MSc degree in Operational Research from the London School of Economics in 1975, and his MS and PhD degrees in Operations Research from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.