Michael Disch obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management (Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). After graduation, he joined the Chair of Management Accounting as a research assistant and PhD student. He successfully obtained his PhD in 2022 for his thesis “Managing the costs of new product development projects: a longitudinal case study at an automotive company”.

It is crucial for companies to control their R&D-Costs efficiently during New Product Development (NPD) if they want to compete in a challenging business environment. In his research, Michael Disch focusses on the management of such costs especially during the early phase of NPD. The research emphasizes on the challenges of estimating this particular cost type as well as the decision-making when it comes to ongoing budgeting-decisions during projects. From 2018 to 2021 Michael Disch conducted a case study in cooperation with AUDI AG.

Publications:

M. Disch & M. Wouters (2024). Managing new product development projects: What drives within-project development cost compensation? Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

M. Disch (2023). Estimating the Costs of Product Development Projects Based on External Data: The New Product Development Cost Benchmarking Method. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2023.3237543