Industrial Optimization Study Program

The Industrial Optimization Study Program seeks to analyze polices, technologies and mathematical models that permit sustainable strategic differentiation or maximum growth in profitability in a given industry. The focus of the program is therefore structured around three mainstays:

• Policies. Attempts are made to evaluate the impact of given polices of operation, production and logistics in the competitiveness of a given industry. For example, how distribution practices using the cross-docking technique gave Wal-Mart a sustained competitive advantage; or further, how the use of super-hubs sustained the explosive growth in packages transported by Federal Express Corporation (which transported only six packages on its first day of operation and today moves fourteen million packages per day).
• Mathematical models and solution methods.The intention of this line of action is to achieve maximum operational efficiency in tasks, which are critical for the competitiveness of an industry by using mathematical models of combined optimization. For example, airline companies need to establish the ideal allocation of aircraft, crews and maintenance for a predetermined programming of routes. What is the allocation which minimizes the costs involved such that the aircraft (expensive and scarce resources) are well utilized and overbooking is kept to the minimum? The focus of this line is to solve questions of this nature. Results of some research of this type of line of investigation have been published in magazines like Computers & Operations Research, IEEE Transactions on CAD, International Journal of Modern Physics, among others.
• Technology. What are the limits of technology? The first computers appeared at around the time of the end of Would War II; two decades later microprocessors appeared; a decade later we saw graphic interfacing; the following decade internet growth reached a point of critical mass. At the same time industrial automation experienced exponential growth. Programmed machines now establish when and how factory production will be; which aircraft should take off and which aircraft should remain in holding pattern; which shares should be included and which shares should be excluded from an investment portfolio. The main concept of this line of research is to analyze what the limits of technology are by concentrating the focus on the following question: have machines become intelligent? This theoretical line also examines recent results of cognitive psychology and neuroscience on the functioning of the human brain, and the similarities and differences in relation to currently existing computational systems. Some papers on this line of research were published in magazines like Artificial Intelligence and AI Communications.