Presented by Dr. Cor van der Struijf, MBA (IBM Quantum Ambassador)

We experience the benefits of classical computing every day. However, there are challenges that today’s systems would never be able to solve. To stand a chance at solving some of these problems, we need a new kind of computing: Quantum Computing. During this session we will explore together what quantum computers are about, and how they might be applied to operational research and more specifically optimization problems. With this, you would be able to start exploring how quantum computing can help with your research.

7 May 2021 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by dr. Gyöngyi Kovács (Professor in Humanitarian Logistics, Hanken School of Economics)

Humanitarian logistics plays an important part in responding to disasters, crisis, but also epidemics and pandemics. This talk is about what we can learn from humanitarian logistics in tackling supply chain disruptions in pandemics. The talk also gives examples and shares results from current research projects on the COVID-19 pandemic, and also discusses the challenges with the ever-changing parameters of pandemic response.

9 April 2021 WEBINAR RECORDING

9 April 2021 webinar presentation

Presented by Tobias Andersson Granberg, Associate Professor at Linköping University

Emergency response systems, e.g. fire and rescue services and emergency medical services, have been a popular area of study for operational researchers. However, unlike for the airline industry for instance, there do not exist an abundance of success stories, where advanced operational research models and methods have been implemented in practice. In this talk, I’ll present a few emergency response problems, including the classical fire station location problem, ambulance dispatching and relocation, and volunteer management, where OR have been used in practice. I will also discuss some of the challenges with practical implementations, and the trade-off between working on something that is useful in practice, and something that can be published in an OR journal.

5 March 2021 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Laurent Perron (Tech Lead Operations Research at Google)

CP-SAT won all gold medals in the Minizinc challenge in the tracks it participated in the last 3 years. It also proved 5 open problems in the MIPLIB 2017 suite, and improved bounds on a few more. In a sense, it realizes the old dream of having a good MIP solver and a good CP solver in the same engine. In this presentation, we will present how the SAT technology has enabled this merging of the two techniques in a competitive way, and concludes with the challenges and research opportunities in front of us.

5 February 2021 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Prof. dr. Holger H. Hoos (Professor of Machine Learning at Leiden University)

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the use of automated algorithm design methods, such as automated algorithm configuration and portfolio-based algorithm selection, across many areas within operations research, artificial intelligence and beyond. These methods are based on cutting-edge machine learning and optimization techniques; they have also led to substantial advances in those areas.

In this tutorial, I will give an overview of these automated algorithm design methods and introduce Programming by Optimization (PbO), a principled approach for developing high-performance software based on them. I will explain how PbO can fundamentally change the nature of developing solvers for challenging computational problems and give examples for its successful application to a range of prominent problems from OR and AI – notably, mixed integer programming, the travelling salesman problem, AI planning, automated reasoning and machine learning.

8 January 2021 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Alain Nguyen (Combinatorial Optimization Expert at RENAULT)

RENAULT rolled out its first OR application in supply chain in 1992, with the very first version of CPLEX. It was a central planning tool for car production.

Since then, we tackled inbound and outbound transportation, car sequencing, truck and container loading. More recently, we moved to the shop floor to deal with scheduling, line balancing, operator assignment.

Car sequencing, Capacitated VRP, line balancing: the problems we face do not exactly match the academic models. There are always extra tricky constraints and objectives.

Historically, we developed OR applications that were used on a regular basis. More recently, we rolled out tools to carry one shot quick win studies.

Important challenges remain for full OR adoption: data availability in information systems (especially shop floor constraints), non- standard processes in the plants, OR visibility inside the company, lack of facilitators between the central OR team and the field-level operators.

4 December 2020 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Professor Andrea Lodi (Canada Excellence Research Chair in ˝Data Science for Real-time Decision Making˝, École Polytechnique de Montréal)

In this talk, we cover some of the recent and exciting advances in the use of Machine Learning techniques for Combinatorial Optimization by highlighting and characterizing the major directions in which such use has been conducted.

6 November 2020 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Gavin Bell (CEO at Optimeering AS)

Markets are increasingly being used in industry and organizations to procure goods and services that are provided or consumed in defined time intervals or specific volumes.

An important example of this are products and services in electricity markets, such as power reserve capacity and energy. Markets for so-called primary, secondary and tertiary capacity reserve are currently being developed in the Nordic power markets and are proposed or under development for a number of other European power markets. Such markets are often characterized by multiple, complex products. Bids may be linked over time and across products. Procurement can be driven by multiple objectives such as price and security of supply, that may be difficult to define quantitatively and difficult to compare.

There are often multiple stakeholders involved with differing backgrounds, assumptions, agendas and goals. Existing legal frameworks and rules may also constrain the market and its clearing and pricing processes. Mathematically, the markets are often mixed-integer non-convex, which poses significant challenges in designing and implementing market clearing algorithms in practice.

In this presentation, I talk about our experience in developing and implementing clearing algorithms for these types of markets and for calculating clearing prices, with a focus on market clearing for power reserve services.

2 October 2020 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Filippo Focacci (CO-founder and CEO, DecisionBrain),

Désirée Rigonat (OR consultant and Data Analyst, DecisionBrain)

Based on machine learning and mathematical optimization, DecisionBrain’s applications are used every day to optimize the workforce of market leaders in the Services industry such as ISS, JLL and Serco. This presentation shows how we optimize operations for the London Cycle Hire, one of the largest bikes sharing systems in the world.

DPO (Distribution Planning Optimization) is a Smart Planning System designed for Serco’s Control Room. Its goal is to help planners drive the scheme with the right inventory of bikes in the right place at the right time at the lowest cost. DPO forecasts, in real time, the number of bicycle pickups and returns at each station. It computes target inventory levels at each hour of the day and determines the most efficient routes for the vans to redistribute bicycles from stations in excess to stations in shortage.

The insights and alerts provided via a very intuitive user interface enable planners to focus on analysis and exception management rather than repetitive tasks.

The benefits of the system include:

– Increase of ridership and customer satisfaction

– Reduction of operation costs

– Reduction of penalty costs due to full and empty stations

4 SEPTEMBER 2020 WEBINAR RECORDING

Presented by Martina Fischetti (Lead Engineer at Vattenfall)

Moments of crisis are also opportunities to look at the world with new eyes. This is how we discovered an analogy between the optimization challenge of locating turbines offshore (main expertise of the speaker) and the one of locating facilities to ensure social distancing and safety during COVID-pandemic. This allows us to use our expertise to help businesses and customers during this challenging period. In particular, we show that using mathematical optimization one can increase profit for businesses (fitting more tables in a restaurant or umbrellas on a beach) while also increasing safety for customers.

3 July 2020 WEBINAR RECORDING

EURO Practitioners’ Forum past and planned activities are available to the Forum members, as well as the wider public.

Visit the website and register as a member for free, to get the regular updates on all activities: EPF Member registration page. The recordings and details from previous webinars are also available on this website.

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