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Organisation

Engineering Management

Research Group

Lifecycle:1 Oct 2003 →  Today
Organisation profile:Research is carried out in the following areas: applied technology, environmental and tech¬nology management, safety/security management, risk management, production management and operations management. - Applied technology: this research is focused on biorobotics and biomimetic sensors for robots with the aim of expanding the extent of the solution space explored by human engineers by taking inspiration from natural organisms designed by evolutionary processes. - Energy technology, economics and policy: energy efficiency (techniques, estimation of potential, management), electricity (planning, pricing, liberalisation, management of the distribution companies), cogeneration (planning, pricing, project investment appraisal, estimation of potential), renewable energy (evaluation of investment projects and market development). - Environmental technology, economics and policy: environmental data (inventory and study of data sources, structuring data inquiry, evaluation of databases), environmental reporting (modelling, social activities as source of environmental pressure e.g. housing, industrial sectors, agriculture, transport), water supply and demand (micro and macro economic study of demand and supply, potentials of water savings), participation as expert in IPCC, OECD and UN, social dialogue and communication on crucial decision processes. - Technology Assessment: processes of innovation as complex learning processes, types of knowledge that various actors ¿ scientists, engineers, citizens, public authorities, enterprises - can bring into these learning processes., possibilities, risks and underlying choices of technological applications and different visions on these issues in society, the added value of public debate regarding these visions for structuring open policy processes in a perspective of sustainable development. - Security and safety: external communication on risks, intervention decisions (modelling and analysis of dynamic decisions under uncertainty), industrial contingency planning and organisation (evaluation of emergency plans, decision structure, information and communication flows), optimization of domino effect prevention, safety and security culture, safety management as part of an integral care system. - Product development and innovation management: multifunctional product design (design for 'X'), in customer oriented product develop¬ment and in the management process of organisational and technolo¬gical innovation processes. - Operations management: focuses on operational business processes in their economic and technological context. This context is customer oriented, dynamic in nature and characterised by a high degree of technology. On the one hand business functions become more and more interdependent while on the other a more analytic and model-based approach is emerging. The main research areas are the following: Operations management: simultaneous consideration of material and capacity decisions, explicit modelling of stochastic behaviour in operational systems and development of operational performance measures. Supply/demand chain management: streamlining the processes of the supply/demand chain, global optimisation of the entire network and the evolution towards mass customisation. Operations research: operations research, applied mathematics and statistics are the theoretical foundations for modelling operations management problems, especially for the three research areas outlined above. Main activities are in stochastic models, simulation and models incorporating risk.
Keywords:SUPPLY CHAIN MODELLING, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT, OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, GRAPH THEORY, ENERGY, RISK MANAGEMENT, QUEUEING THEORY, ENVIRONMENT
Disciplines:Applied mathematics in specific fields, Statistics and numerical methods, Electrical power engineering, Energy generation, conversion and storage engineering, Manufacturing engineering, Other mechanical and manufacturing engineering, Product development