Professor Stephen Disney

Teaching profile

Professor Disney currently lectures Operations Analysis to MBA and Operations Management to MSc students at Cardiff Business School. He also teaches Supply Chain Modelling to the Mathematics Department of Cardiff University. He has extensive experience of teaching in-class, on-line and on-site to both Postgraduate and Executive audiences.

Research interests

Dr Stephen Disney is a Professor of Operations Management at Cardiff Business School, UK. For his PhD he studied Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) supply chains. Professor Disney has previously held Visiting Positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Boston University, USA.

Professor Disney’s current research interests involve the application of control theory and statistical techniques to operations management and supply chain scenarios in order to investigate their dynamic and economic performance. Stephen has a particular interest in the bullwhip effect. Stephen has advised several of the world's largest corporations on the bullwhip effect and his research has influenced the material flow of at least 1 in every 7 pound of UK retail sales. He has worked with many companies in the UK, US and Europe and on supply chains that operate globally. A short film of Stephen talking about his research is available from UKfutureTV.

Selected publications

Disney, S.M. and Warburton, R.W.H., (2011), “On the Lambert W function:  Economic Order Quantity applications and pedagogical considerations”, International Journal of Production Economics.
Gaalman, G. and Disney, S.M., (2009), “On bullwhip in a family of order-up-to policies with ARMA(2,2) demand and arbitrary lead-times”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 121, No. 2, pp 454-463.
Disney, S.M., (2008), “Supply chain aperiodicity, bullwhip and stability analysis with Jury’s Inners”,IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp101-116.
Disney,S.M. and Lambrecht, M.R., (2008), “On replenishment rules, forecasting and the bullwhip effect in supply chains”,Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management,Vol. 2, No. 1, pp1-80.
Disney, S.M., Lambrecht, M., Towill, D.R. and Van de Velde, W., (2008) “The value of coordination in a two echelon supply chain: Sharing information,policies and parameters”, IIE Transactions. Volume 40, Issue 3, pages 341-355.
Chen, Y.F. and Disney, S.M., (2007) “The myopic order-up-to policy with a feedback controller”, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp351-368.
Boute, R.N.,Disney, S.M., Lambrecht, M. and Van Houdt, B., (2007), “An integrated production and inventory model to dampen upstream demand variability in the supply chain”, European Journal of Operational Research,
Vol. 178, No. 1, pp121-142.
Hosoda, T. and Disney, S.M., (2006), “On variance amplification in a three-echelon supply chain with minimum mean squared error forecasting”, OMEGA: The International Journal of Management Science, Vol. 34, pp344-358.
Here is Stephen’s complete publications list.

Activities

• Associate Editor of the European Journal of Industrial Engineering and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Business Logistics, International Journal of Production Economics, the European Journal of Operational Research, the International Journal of Applied Management Science and The Open Management Journal.
• Managing Guest Editor of the International Journal of Production Economics special issue of papers from the 16th International Working Seminar on Production Economics.
• Member of the Operations Research Society (ORS) of the UK, the International Society for Inventory Research (ISIR), the European Operations Management Society (EUROMA) and the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS).
• External Examiner for Lancaster School of Management and Brighton Business School.

Research awards:

Stephen received the Best Paper of the 2008 from the journal Production Planning and Control, a "Citation of Excellence" for one of the Top 50 articles published in 2005 on Management and a “Highly Commended” awarded from the Literati Club.