Project and alliances

L'Oréal Supply Chain Partnership
L'Oréal Belgium has signed a partnership in Supply Chain Management with CESCM, involving the financing of a doctoral student/local coordinator, joint projects and workshops, drawing on the broad expertise and international network of CESCM. The partnership is monitored by a steering group consisting of two members from each L'Oréal and LSM (currently the Director of LSM and the Coordinator of CESCM). The partnership has the objective to jointly develop the logistics and supply chain management skills and practices of L'Oréal, through training, analysis, project work at multiple levels and increased awareness of the functional scope within the supply chain.
 
AGRELL Per

• Development of general purpose software for solving production planning problems by mathematical programming
  This project consists in the development of a branch cut software to solve these problems through the analysis of their mathematical programming formulations and automatic generation of additional constraints to improve these formulations.
  
  WOLSEY Laurence
  
  
• Development of large scale optimization techniques for solving problems in material science
  In the study of new materials, determining the ruin load is an important issue. The theory of limit analysis states the problem as a very large scale convex optimization one. Interior point based algorithms are implemented and tested. Application to 3D problems resorts to parallel programming techniques.
  
  LOUTE Etienne
  
  
• GAPEM, Group for Analysis of Performance in Economics and Management
  Modeling and analysis of performance related to organizations and units, evaluated with explicit consideration of economic context and managerial goals. In particular, the project seeks to extend and refine the utilization of parametric and non-parametric methods in the control and regulation of activities. Applications of such systems are found, but not limited to, decentralized industries, regulated network industries, health care production and public services.
  
  AGRELL Per
   
• Improvement of large scale optimization techniques for solving problems in management and engineering science
  Coping with the curse of dimensionality of problems in engineering and management science requires a blend of numerical analysis techniques (linear algebra and sparse matrices), data structures techniques and parallel programming techniques. We focus on mathematical programming approaches such as basis factorization techniques for linear programming (LP), Cholesky factorization for interior point methods, decomposition algorithms for linear and nonlinear programming. For pure integer programming problems, we explore the possibility of exploiting the internal structure of basis scalar and block LU factorizations to devise branching rules promoting the integrality of components in the solution of LP relaxations arising in branch and bound algorithms.
  
  LOUTE Etienne
  
  
• Incentive, Coordination and Motivation Systems in Frontier Analysis
  The project addresses strategic behavior under ex post control by frontier analysis tools, such as DEA. Anticipating action profiles by decision making units using principal-agent theory and applied game theory, the project investigates important issues for the theoretical validity and practical viability of e.g. DEA yardstick regimes in the presence of technological innovation, uncertainty and structural change. Part of the work is conducted in close collaboration with regulatory institutions in Europe, using real data to foresee and analyse strategic risks in yardstick regulation.
  
  AGRELL Per

• Managing the return flows of empty containers across the logistic chain
  Our field of research is the management of the return flows of empty logistic containers. Logistic containers are any kind of reusable items used for storing or shipping goods (pallets, barrels, racks, trestles,...). The object of this research is to understand the fundamental economic logics emerging in the design of the reverse network and in its daily management. We provide models that allow to design an independent reverse network and procedures to realize the operational coordination of the flows in the network
  
  SEMAL Pierre and LANGE Jean-Charles

• Modeling variability in a supply chain
  The goal of this project is to develop a model for the variability of flows in a supply chain based on the peakedness (a measure for the variability of flows derived from the telecommunication literature). Variability is an important source of cost in a supply chain, our goal is to be able to model the impact of strategic decisions for the design of a supply chain on variability.
  
  CHEVALIER Philippe
  
  
• Models for the staffing of multi-skill call centers
  This project aims at developing models to predict the performance of call centers that handle different types of calls and that use agents that are cross-trained to be able to handle more than one call type. Earlier research has shown that with a small amount of cross-training most of the benefits can be obtained. In a first phase we develop more precise models to evaluate the performance as a function of the staffing of agents with different skill sets. In a second phase we develop an optimization approach to be able to find the most economical way to achieve a given service level.
  
  CHEVALIER Philippe
  
  
• Results of the variability of time operation on the performances of a production line
  The object of this research is to understand, to model and to estimate the outcomes of the variable time operations on the global performances of a production line. The performances studied will be the capacity of production, the total quantity of products in progress and the cycle time. The research will aim also the implementation of computer tools.
  
  SEMAL Pierre and CHEVALIER Philippe
  
  
• TransLogisTIC Project
  The Walloon government has funded a 2 year and a half research project in transport and logistics through the "Marshall Plan" which involves such firms as Alstom, Alcatel, SNCB and Arcelor-Mittal.
  The purpose of this project is to increase the communication skills and technologies in rail, road, waterway transport firms.
  
  BRUSSET Xavier