Researching heuristic and metaheuristic optimization models for production scheduling and routing in Industry 4.0. Teaching bachelor and master courses in the faculty of Industrial Engineering Technology.

Problem modeling, algorithm design and implementation for a variety of complex practical problems: Applications: Advanced machine scheduling algorithms for the smart factory (industry 4.0): - egg packing stations - Operations scheduling for human-robot collaborative production cells - Scheduling in the sheet metal workshop 4.0Vehicle Routing for electric vehicles (VRP with battery charging operations planning) Waste recycling process design

Development and implementation of optimization algorithms for Vehicle Routing Problems taking into account time windows, multiple capacities, pickup-and-delivery constraints, timespan and many more. Development of optimization framework for independent routing of drivers, tractors, and trailers. Development of optimization engine for prison transport taking into account trailer compartments and precedence constraints between individual transports.

• Development of a control algorithm for AGV routing in an order picking warehouse operating in an e-commerce environment.• Software development in Java: business game played by master students as part of the course Leadership and Management.• Algorithm design for determining the optimal 3D-part unfolding for sheet metal production. Parallel multi-objective enumeration algorithm.

Conducted research on heuristics to generate tool paths for laser cutters.- The laser cutting tool path problem with many (but not all) of its technical constraints can be remodeled as a precedence constrained generalized traveling salesman problem (PCGTSP). - Generic GTSP approaches are adapted to incorporate the precedence constraints.- Specialized construction heuristics are developed.- A new tool path representation method is developed and improvement heuristics exploiting this new structure are investigated.- A penalty-based multi-start heuristic is developed that is able to generate thermal feasible tool paths.• Formulated and tested a set of MIP models in Cplex and designed and tested a set of (meta)heuristics for generating laser cutter tool paths. • Software development in C++: implementing a laser cutting tool path generation software delivering the complete cycle: starting from a .dxf nested plate (parts recognition), generating the tool paths to NC/.xml machine instructions. • Implemented a transient Finite Difference Method to evaluate heat transfer during cutting and incorporated this as a sub routine in the above optimization framework. • Reformulation of a patrol routing problem into a well-known polynomial problem which mistakenly was thought to be NP-hard.• Reviewer of the International Journal of Production Research.

• Supported Testing phase for an Oracle Lodestar implementation at a Belgian energy supplier (analyst at Accenture).• Training material preparation in Berlin, Germany for an SAP implementation at a bus/train manufacturer (analyst at Accenture).• Business case analysis for Business Intelligence Software implementation at major Belgian retailer: Oracle Hyperion vs SAP BI (analyst at Accenture).

Internship in preparation of my thesis work during the academic year of 2006-2007 on the optimization of a process to deposit organic semiconductors from solution in order to produce working transistors.• Lab and clean-room experience with vacuum and solution deposition techniques.