Operational Methods for Production and Logistics (OMPL)

Section head: prof.dr. W.H.M. Zijm

Keywords: logistics, production planning and purchasing

Department of Operational Methods for Production and logistics (OMPL)

The research and education of the department OMPL focuses on the optimization of business processes in industry and service organizations. Special emphasis is on supply chain planning and control, distribution logistics, materials handling, manufacturing and maintenance systems, purchasing and management of health care organizations. Work of the group is strongly analytical, including a quantitative modeling approach, the development of optimization algorithms and the design of (close to) optimal solutions.

Research

OMPL research activities focus on the following application domains:

·	Supply chain management and service logistics: Design, planning and control of after-sales supply chains for capital goods, spare parts logistics in relation to maintenance planning and control.

·	Health care logistics: Operating room planning, patient care trajectories

·	Distribution Logistics: Vehicle routing under environmental and legal conditions (congestion, European legislation); distributed planning and control of multi-actor transport networks using agent technology; planning and control of materials handling systems.

·	Procurement in the public sector: Optimal sourcing, Cooperative purchasing.

·	Production management: Project scheduling and manufacturing systems design, planning and control in make-to-order and engineer-to-order environments

Within our research projects, we closely cooperate with industry and (public) service organizations. Recent examples are Thales Nederland, Rotterdam Harbor, Erasmus Medical Center and ORTEC.

Education

The courses given by the department OMPL are closely related to the research topics as mentioned above. Courses cover basic operations research methods, and optimization of logistic systems in all aspects: procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, inventories, supply chains, maintenance, reverse logistics and remanufacturing. Next to the traditional manufacturing supply chains, the group also teaches the application of logistics principles in the service sector (health care, after sales service of capital goods). A key part of the educational tasks are in the bachelor and master program in Industrial Engineering and Management (IE&M). OMPL is responsible for the track “Production and Logistics Management” within the master IE&M. Furthermore, courses are given in the bachelor programs of Business Administration and Health Care Management. Finally, OMPL participates in the recently acknowledged IE program of the University of Twente Graduate School, as well as in PhD courses of the Netherlands Network for Operations Research.

Key persons: prof.dr. W.H.M. Zijm, prof. dr. J. Telgen, dr. M.C. van der Heijden, dr. P.C. Schuur, dr.ir. E.W. Hans.

Projects:

National funding (partly in preparation):

o	TRANSUMO: (Transition to Sustainable Mobility, Bsik):

o	COPLAN: Agent-based systems for co-operative planning in transportation networks

o	SUSTAIM: Sustainable Supply Chains

o	PILOT: Effective maintenance and service logistics for improved mobility

o	IPCR (Integral Product Creation and Realization, IOP):

o	DSS for design for service logistics

o	DSS for product design under strict time-to-market restrictions and planning uncertainty

o	NEVI (Dutch Purchasing Society):

o	Horizontal co-operation in purchasing

o	DSS for multiple sourcing

o	Other projects in preparation ( SENTER, SLF, EMC)