Autumn Workshop: Practice of OR – sharing experiences, building networks

Plenary

Matti Vuorinen, Director of Advanced Analytics at forestry giant UPM

“Practical OR in a tumultuous world”

Matti will be discussing the design of effective OR tools in the context of a rapidly changing environment. He will be using the example of UPM’s experience in developing OR tools that are used to make decisions that are critically dependent on the energy market. The current European energy market is in turmoil. Matti will be talking about how the OR tools are used to adapt to changes in the market environment.  In particular, he will discuss the possible pitfalls of rushed changes to the electricity market mechanisms now that there is so much political pressure to control the prices.

Open space

Meet and talk to colleagues, and expand your thinking! (List of topics)

The open space session is in a virtual meeting room where we will have 8 or 9 small-group discussions around hot topics in the OR practitioner community. Topics will range from “Why OR is so easy in my company” to “What to do with Machine Learning in OR?”. There will also be space for extending the discussions around the plenary.

The discussion topics will be arranged in tables that anyone can access at any time to maximize the networking. Choose a topic to start with, then move on to a different group whenever you choose. If you are too still, you will be encouraged to switch to another topic; and everyone will be encouraged to talk.

OR in action in 5 minutes

A series of lightning talks that will showcase some of the rich variety of practical OR being undertaken across the OR community (session details).

Speakers include:

Nadine-Cyra Freistetter, Finnish Meteorological Institute:    SuCCESs – Modelling Pathways to a Sustainable Society: presenting modelling that calculates scenarios for reaching sustainability goals up until 2100.

Yue Zhou-Kangas, UPM: Planting a million trees: how UPM Uruguay schedules seedling deliveries, to replace trees harvested from 300 plantations with seedlings raised in 14 nurseries

Colin Eden, Strathclyde University: Vicious cycles and Systemic Risk in a Pandemic discussing strategy development for tackling COVID 19

Sander van Aken, Flixbus:  Talk problems to me: Understanding user needs for OR software development

Jasper van Doorn: describing the complexities of Integrated production and transportation scheduling in the compound feed industry

Ahmet Çinar, Trendyol, on the use of optimisation in e-commerce

More, better, deeper: exploring OR application areas

In this slot we invite you to engage in discussions around certain fields of OR, in one of 5 parallel sessions. Each session will start with one or two short presentations from people familiar with the subject, and will then open up into deeper discussion of the topic. A short report back from each session will be presented during the closing plenary, including, where appropriate, next steps to explore the issues further.

You will be able to choose which one of these five topic groups you want to join: Chemical/process industries; Aviation, OR in education, OR for good, Mobility. See below for details

Choose from the following:

Chemical/process industries  – Claude Philippe Medard, SAP, Germany

We want to discuss Petrochemical Supply Chain Planning that creates production plans for multiple plants with feed onto one another (like the Naptha Cracker and Butadien feeds) as part of their Supply Chain Planning.

This requires highly performant solutions to non-linear optimization problems solved daily for multiple time-periods. We will hear a short example case study, where the solutions to these problems feed other plants’ production planning problems, that, in turn, feed into the logistics planning and scheduling upstream and downstream (nominations on pipelines, barges, railcars).

After this case study, we would like to discuss the urgent need to create enterprise level solutions to manage the end-to-end supply chain both for inbound and outbound logistics (pipeline, barge, railcar scheduling of nominations) and internal supply chains (non-linear production plans).

Aviation – Andy Harrison, Inawisdom, UK and Waldemar Kocjan, Jeppesen, Sweden

This session will discuss the role of OR in aviation and how it is helping the response to new and emerging threats, such as the Covid pandemic.

Speaker:

Tom Occleston (Atkins, UK) will be speaking on the application of OR to aviation security.

OR in education – Milagros Baldemor, Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, Philippines

OR in Education deals with the application of advanced analytical methods used in decision making in the field of education. It utilizes mathematical modelling and other diverse techniques to analyze complex situations in order for learners to fully understand analytical concepts that will help raise their level of awareness in solving real world problems.

Speakers:

Eduard Albay (Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, Philippines) will speak about Design Thinking-based teaching plans, evaluating and comparing students’ creativity as inputs to classroom teachers’ practices during and beyond the pandemic.

Ronald Aquino (Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University) will present on the flipped classroom approach in teaching modern geometry.

OR for good – Joaquim Gromicho, Ortec, The Netherlands and Helena Ramalhinho, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain

OR makes things better. Usually that means: OR makes businesses better. The world needs improvement, and the United Nations have defined 17 objective criteria on what helps, see https://sdgs.un.org/goals. Having criteria enables OR! After all, the objective function becomes clear. But what about the variables, the constraints, and the parameters of the model? And more importantly, how do we go from model to impact? I will start by telling some success stories from the Analytics for a Better World institute and will discuss on how to scale such initiatives up in a way as to bring hope to our world. We only have one world, after all. Scarcity is also a powerful enabler for OR…

Mobility – Torkel Haufmann, SINTEF, Norway

The mobility sector contributes about a quarter of emissions in Europe, and Operations Research methods have a long history of contributing to better solutions in the area. We want to discuss the future of OR for mobility in light of new developments like electric vehicles, micro-mobility and mobility as a service. We’ll hear one or two examples of current applications of optimization in mobility. After this, we’d like to have a discussion about the models, algorithms and approaches needed to support the sector’s goals in the next 10 years.

Speaker:

Dag Kjenstad (SINTEF) will give a presentation with some details on a recent project about on-demand transportation in rural areas.

 

After the registration to the workshop, you are welcome to use the gather.town link at any time to set up your avatar, explore the space, catch up on the programme details, and access resources and links to support OR in practice.  The space will remain available to workshop participants to meet each other, after the official close, if you want to keep the conversation going. (Instructions for attendees)

The event organisers will host and guide you through this exciting virtual workshop experience: Ruth Kaufman, Bjorn Thalen, Waldemar Kocjan, Michele Quattrone, Susanne Heipcke, Andy Harrison, Sofiane Oussedik, Adisa Mujezinovic, Claude Philippe Medard, Torkel Haufmann, Christian Timpe and Milagros Baldemor.

EPF Autumn Workshop details are also available in pdf (download), please share and join us online during this inspiring free event.