Alfred A. Kuehn (CIT 1952, IA 1954, Ph.D. 1959)

Al Kuehn is a pioneer in applying analytical methods to better understand dynamic consumer behavior and marketing processes. As a Tepper School of Business professor, he was one of the founders of the school’s revolutionary “management science” focus, the use of a quantitative approach for decision-making and business analytics.

Based on his groundbreaking work, Kuehn went on to form Management Science Associates (MSA) from a small Tepper School office, helping to change how companies operate. MSA is now one of the world’s premier data and market analysis research firms.

The son of immigrants, Kuehn was raised near Pittsburgh. He recalled how his father, a tool and die maker, would invite young engineers over and his mother told him, “They got it made,’ since they were all grads from Carnegie Tech.”

A young Kuehn carried newspapers and saved for years to attend Carnegie Tech as a chemical engineering major. Encouraged by the business school’s founding dean, George Leland Bach, Kuehn enrolled at the Tepper School for his master’s degree.

A second-year class with Nobel laureate and founding Tepper School faculty member Herbert Simon inspired Kuehn to scientifically model consumer behavior as dynamic, just like the flows Kuehn analyzed as a chemical engineer.

While at the Tepper School, Kuehn developed a model of the detergent market for Lever Brothers, a successful project that formed the basis of the school's unique ‘Management Game,’ the sole capstone to the master’s program played by thousands of students from 1960 until 1995.