OM and OR are at the core of the undergraduate IE program. The graduate programs (MSc and PhD) in Operations Management & Logistics attract top-level students from all over the world. Researchers in the school are member of the Beta research school and participate in industrial activities with members of the European Supply Chain Forum.
The School of Industrial Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology is looking for 3 PhD candidates in the area of Maintenance and Service Logistics. The group Operations, Planning, Accounting and Control (OPAC) conducts research in the area of Operations Management, with specific emphasis on
- Planning and Control in Manufacturing, Services, and Supply Chains;
- Distribution Logistics;
- Maintenance and Reliability;
- Finance and Accounting, oriented towards operational processes.
PhD projects
PhD project 1: System-focused inventory control for spare parts networks.In this project, we study the spare parts inventory control for networks consisting of central and local warehouses, and with properties such as the use of lateral transshipments and emergency shipments, customer differentiation, and budget constraints for investments in new parts. The objective is to develop building blocks and to combine appropriate building blocks for an overall planning concept under which system availability constraints for the various installed systems are realized in an efficient way.
PhD project 2: Effect of (re)design decisions on downtime, service logistics costs, and Total Cost of Ownership. In thisproject, we look at design decisions for technical systems regarding the system structure, the selection of components and suppliers, building in redundancy, modifications of components of existing systems, and so on. Designers tend to look mainly at reliability and production costs of a new system. We will develop quantitative models which show the effect of design choices on the performance of systems when they are installed in the field. With such models, companies are able to make better decisions.
PhD project 3: Location strategy for the maintenance of trains. The maintenance of trains consists of preventive and corrective maintenance. Preventive maintenance actions are executed at planned visits of trains to maintenance locations, and consist of usage-based and inspection-based maintenance actions. A corrective maintenance action may take place in the field or via a short extra visit of a train to a maintenance location. In this project, we study how many maintenance locations one should have in a railway network, where the locations should be positioned, and what level of specialization is desired per location, such that one obtains a high availability of the trains against low overall costs.
Projects 1 and 2 are part of the NWO-TOP project “Service Logistics for Advanced Capital Goods” (NWO is the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). In these projects, we collaborate closely with ASML and NedTrain. Project 3 is funded by NedTrain and is part of the NedTrain R&D program.
