Christian Fikar

Christian Fikar is a Professor of Food Supply Chain Management at the Faculty of Life Sciences: Food, Nutrition and Health at the University of Bayreuth, based at the Kulmbach campus. His research focuses on business management issues in food value chains, particularly time-critical logistics processes and computer-based decision support systems.

Professor Fikar studied Supply Chain Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, completed his doctorate and habilitation at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and has held academic positions at both institutions before joining the University of Bayreuth. He has extensive international experience from research periods in the USA, Taiwan, Spain, and Finland.

His methodological expertise spans Operations Research, Operations Management, and Business Analytics, with applications focused on increasing the resilience, sustainability, and efficiency of food value chains. Professor Fikar's research particularly examines logistics decisions in the food mail order industry and short food supply chains (regional supply networks) in Upper Franconia. His work enables more efficient processes that can contribute to reducing food waste while maintaining high-quality food delivery systems. Key research areas include perishable food distribution, digital logistics platforms, and crowd logistics for local food systems.

Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on computational approaches to food supply chain challenges, integrating simulation and optimization techniques to address problems in perishable food distribution, crowd logistics, and regional food systems. His work shows increasing attention to digital transformation in food supply chains, quality preservation in logistics, and sustainable delivery models.

Professor Fikar has advised doctoral students including Florian Cramer, whose 2025 dissertation focused on retail access models. His research has been supported by various projects examining sustainable food distribution systems, e-grocery operations, and resilience in short food supply chains. He actively contributes to the sustainable development of regional food networks in Upper Franconia through both research and teaching initiatives at the University of Bayreuth.