Contributors

Abstract

Gerkotze Bonthuys (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has an MSc degree in chemical engineering. He has been working for Sasol as a process engineer since 2008. He started in the Secunda gas production environment and currently works in the gas and utilities environment focusing on air separation. He has used the gas factory model to study the feasibility of the expansion of production capacity at gasification and the effect of installing additional cooling capacity at gas cooling on production throughput. He enjoys stochastic modeling because he can use his skills as a process engineer and his experience in the gas production environment to analyze and scrutinize the stochastic results and ultimately improve productivity across a larger value chain. Ebert Cawood (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) is a chemical engineer at Sasol. He was introduced to stochastic modeling while looking for a better way to model a solids-handling batch-operating plant. He worked in the operations research group in 2008 where he built a stochastic model of Sasol's Benfield units. This forms part of the gas factory model. Although no longer part of the operations research group, he still uses a stochastic model, primarily to do stock predictions and to plan statutory shutdowns for the Sasol synfuels catalyst plant. Jay Cunningham (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) has worked as a professional engineer in private, university, and public sectors. He is assistant director of maintenance and environment with the New Brunswick Department of Transportation (NBDoT). He has worked in various positions within the NBDoT, including asset management, corridor planning, fleet services, policy development, and highway operations. Jay holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a master's of science degree in transportation engineering from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Miguel de Lascurain (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. He earned his PhD in systems engineering from the University of Waterloo and a postdoctoral degree in finance from Tulane University. He is interested in the applications of OR in finance. Luis de los Santos (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is head of the subdivision of securities settlement systems and central counterparties at the Bank of Mexico. He earned a master's degree in finance from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and has worked in the Mexican Central Bank's payment system division for 13 years. Esmi Dreyer (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) is an assistant operations researcher in Sasol's stochastic operations modelling team. This is her first job after completing a BSc (honors) in chemistry with mathematics and applied mathematics in 2008. Her stochastic modeling experiences have included the sizing of various product tanks and upgrading the interface of the gas factory model. She enjoys working in OR because it allows her to illuminate the underlying structure of the world around her while satisfying her need to do something practical, sensible, and useful. Ingrid Farasyn (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) leads the European branch of the PS Analytics organization of Procter & Gamble. She focuses on supply network design, inventory modeling, and decision analysis. She holds an MSc in engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and the University of Calgary, Canada. She is CPIM and CSCP certified. She has coauthored several papers that have been published in Interfaces and the European Journal of Operational Research. Andrea Feunekes (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) is a founding partner and co-CEO of Remsoft. An award-winning entrepreneur, she is responsible for the company's strategic direction and plays a leading role in the day-to-day operations of the business. Under her leadership, Remsoft has grown from a start-up with a handful of key clients in the early 1990s to a leading provider of software and services for sustainable management in use on six continents. Andrea holds a bachelor's degree in outdoor recreation (honors) and a BA in geography from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, a postgrad diploma in secondary education (geography) from McGill University in Montreal, and a master's of science in forestry from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Ugo Feunekes (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) is cofounder and chief technology officer of Remsoft. He is regarded as the leading developer of software for integrated land management using linear programming technologies. He leads Remsoft's research and development program and overall product development and provides direction for the company's training, service, and maintenance programs. Under his direction, the Remsoft system has become the most widely used software application for resource management in public and private sector organizations around the world. Ugo holds a BS degree in forestry from Lakehead University, a BS in computer science and mathematics from McGill University, and an MS in forestry from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Marc Fischer (“ Managing Global Brand Investments at DHL ”) holds the Chair of Business Administration with specialization in marketing and services at the University of Passau, Germany. His expertise includes the measurement and management of marketing performance, brand management, and the optimization of the marketing mix. His research appears in journals such as Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics. Michele Fisher (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) stumbled on a career in OR after completing a BSc (honors) in mathematics at Queen's University in Canada. The subsequent 20 years have exposed her to a range of problems in support of operations at the Department of National Defence in Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Netherlands, peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan, and now for Sasol in South Africa. She is a generalist with many techniques in her OR toolbox. She loves the challenge of problem definition and the rewards of presenting results that provide immediate and relevant decision support. She is a senior operations researcher in the stochastic operations modeling team at Sasol Technology. Her work is focused on discrete event simulation modeling of energy and steam in the petrochemical production processes and on human resources modeling. Tjark Freundt (“ Managing Global Brand Investments at DHL ”) is a partner at McKinsey & Company, based in Hamburg, Germany. He serves clients mainly in logistics, travel, and utilities on marketing and sales topics. His specific expertise includes brand management and sales. Tjark studied business administration at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management, where he also earned a PhD for his work on branding. Wolfgang Giehl (“ Managing Global Brand Investments at DHL ”) is head of global branding and advertising at Deutsche Post DHL. He joined the company, at that time Deutsche Post World Net, in 1995 and subsequently led key projects such as the IPO and the launch of DHL as a global logistics brand. He manages all brand-related matters for DHL across all DHL entities, express, supply chain, and global forwarding/freight. Francisco J. Herrería (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is chief settlement officer at INDEVAL, the Mexican central securities depository. He graduated from the Banking and Commercial School with a bachelor's degree in accountancy and earned a master's degree in business administration from the Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresa (IPADE). Salal Humair (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) is a visiting associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an associate professor at the School of Science and Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. He received his doctorate in OR at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research interests are in applying OR to large-scale systems such as health-care and water systems. Johan Janse van Rensburg (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has an MSc degree in OR and was previously employed by South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, where he was involved in various OR projects, including some stochastic simulation projects with Sasol. In 2008 he joined the Sasol OR group. He is a senior operations researcher in the stochastic operations modeling team and is responsible for the fuels blending model of the petrol and diesel blending facilities at Sasol. Jaco Joubert (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has a BEng in industrial engineering and began his career at Sasol in 2001. He is a senior operations researcher. He has been involved in stochastic simulation modeling since 2002. Throughout his career he gained valuable experience in applying simulation and optimization techniques in support of different projects and businesses within Sasol. He worked on both the development of the fuels blending model and the liquid factory model. He currently focuses on modeling of the supply chain and logistics environment and is team leader of the supply chain and logistics modeling team within the value chain optimization group. Joel I. Kahn (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) has 30 years of supply chain modeling experience in PS Analytics at Procter & Gamble. His interests and expertise are in the area of inventory and capacity analysis, collaborative supply chain design, and simulation. Joel holds a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Cincinnati, where he taught graduate-level classes in production and inventory control. He was an adjunct associate professor. Peter Kolesar (“ Breaking the Deadlock: Improving Water-Release Policies on the Delaware River Through Operations Research ”), professor emeritus at Columbia University, is the research director of Columbia's Deming Center for Quality and Productivity Management and a member of the Water Center of Columbia's Earth Institute. His research spans many areas of operations research with applications including the deployment of police and fire fighting resources, industrial quality control, diagnosis of glaucoma, industrial production planning, telephone call centers, and counter-IED warfare. He and Warren Walker were awarded the 1976 Lanchester Prize for his design of the FDNY's computerized fire engine relocation algorithm, which was used to great benefit during the 9/11 World Trade Center crisis. The author of more than 50 scientific papers, Peter Kolesar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the INFORMS. Willem Louw (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) began his career in 1978 as an assistant engineer in civil construction for the South African Transport Services based in Cape Town after graduating with a master's degree in civil engineering (construction management) from the University of Stellenbosch. He joined Sasol Technology in December 1985 as a principal cost engineer responsible for the management of cost estimating, cost control, planning, and scheduling for a large number of capital projects. He held a number of management positions within Sasol Technology until the beginning of 2001, when he left Sasol Technology to manage the Sasol Condea (the chemical interests of RWE-DEA) integration program based in Hamburg, Germany. During this period he was part of the executive committee of Sasol Olefins and Surfactants until December 2003. Willem rejoined Sasol Technology in January 2004 as general manager for engineering and project management. In 2005 he was appointed managing director of Sasol Synfuels International. He has been managing director of Sasol Technology since July 2006. John MacNaughton (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a BS in forestry and was the first to obtain a minor in computer applications, which focused on using OR and GIS to carry out advanced forest asset management planning. He spent the next six years as a resource planning forester and GIS manager in British Columbia, working on forest license plans and GIS implementation plans for forestry companies such as Slocan, and Lignum Limited, as well as many other projects including forest development plans, visual impact assessments, and interior watershed assessments. He designed and delivered forestry enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to forestry clients in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Texas, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Manitoba. As GIS manager at an engineering firm, John's projects varied from mapping sea floor changes of the dredging in Port Churchill to planning winter road construction in northern Manitoba. In his current position at the New Brunswick Department of Transportation, he is manager of the asset management section within the planning and land management branch. He is responsible for strategic planning of rehabilitation and reconstruction plans for the province's 18,000 km of highways and 2,800 bridges. He is also the senior OR analyst and responsible for the execution and continuous improvement of the asset management system. Kim Mathisen (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) graduated from the University of New Brunswick in 1984 with a BS in civil engineering and subsequently received her designation as a professional engineer. She joined the New Brunswick Department of Transportation upon graduation and worked for 11 years as a traffic safety and design engineer. Kim then worked in various positions in the department including strategic development, construction engineering, and the information management and technology branch, where she was assistant director responsible for geographic information systems. As director of the planning and land management branch, she was responsible for functional planning, environmental services, data collection, highway mapping services, asset management, and land management. She is executive director of the department's engineering services. For the past six years she has also been responsible for the development, implementation, and operation of the department's asset management system. Through her strengths in project management, communications, and change management, she has played an integral role in the success of the project. She is the cochair of the Asset Management Task Force for the Transportation Association of Canada, where she leads the development of a national strategy for asset management practices. She is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick, the Institute of Public Administrators of Canada and over the past few years has been involved with a development project in Africa through the Canadian International Development Agency. Marlize Meyer (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) holds a BSc in chemistry and an MSc in OR from North-West University of South Africa. She is busy with her PhD in OR and has been a lecturer at North-West University in probability theory and simulation. She has worked in various departments of Sasol for the last 20 years and was a founding member of the company's OR group. Marlize has played a key role in building OR capacity and capability and was instrumental in establishing stochastic simulation modeling as a dynamic tool in the operations environment at Sasol. She aims to add sustainable value with OR tools. David Fernando Muñoz (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is professor and head of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. He earned his PhD in OR from Stanford University and is interested in the applications of simulation and the analysis of simulation output. John J. Neale (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) is assistant professor of operations and technology management at Boston University's School of Management. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and held supply chain positions with Hewlett-Packard and Optiant. His research focuses on practical applications of inventory theory. Arturo Palacios-Brun (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is securities settlement manager at INDEVAL, the Mexican central securities depository. He earned a BS in industrial engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México as a Baillères Scholar and is interested in optimization models and simulation applications for financial services. Steve Palmer (“ Taking the Politics Out of Paving: Achieving Transportation Asset Management Excellence Through OR ”) is co-CEO of Remsoft. His primary focus is on corporate strategy, finance, and expanding the company's growth in the areas of business intelligence and advanced analytics. Prior to joining Remsoft, he was chief operating officer for Whitehill Technologies, where he played a key role in growing the company to the fifth largest private software company in Canada. He earned a BS in biology and an MBA from Dalhousie University. He holds the FCMA designation. Hylton Robinson (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has a BSc in chemical engineering and began his career in the Research and Development Department at Sasol, where he focused on coal gasification. He then worked as a plant engineer in an ammonia plant and was involved in major project work including the redesign of the hydrogen purification system. He subsequently moved to the Sasol Technology Engineering Department supporting the Rectisol (sulfur removal and gas purification) plant. During this time he was responsible for the design and implementation of various projects including the redesign of the Sasol One plant to change its feedstock from coal to natural gas. He managed a group of chemical engineers responsible for supporting all the utility plants (steam, water, oxygen and nitrogen, plant air and effluent treatment) as well as a natural gas reforming and purification plant at Sasol One. Hylton has been the manager of the OR group in Sasol for the last three years. During this time, the group was combined with a group of specialist chemical engineers to form the value chain optimization group. This larger group's primary role is to apply expertise and modeling techniques (i.e., stochastic, linear programming, spreadsheets) to maintain and improve Sasol's various value chains. Omar Romero-Hernandez (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Previously he worked for a diverse range of organizations such as Procter & Gamble, Accenture, PEMEX, and the Secretariat for the Environment. He earned his PhD from Imperial College, England. His interests include business process analysis and sustainability issues. Oscar Rosen (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) leads the demand and supply planning analysis group within PS Analytics at Procter & Gamble. He has 20 years of experience in forecasting, inventory theory, simulation, production planning, and capacity analysis. He holds a PhD in process optimization from the University of Toronto. Ruan Rossouw (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has an MSc degree in computer science. He has worked at Sasol since 1997. He joined the OR group in 2000, where he was involved in various projects using stochastic modeling. He has contributed significantly to the development of the fuels blending model. In 2007, he moved to Sasol Technology Research and Development, is a member of the industrial statistics group, and continues to provide advice to Sasol's stochastic operations modeling team. John Ruark (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) is chief technology officer, inventory optimization solutions, at Logility, Inc. He was CTO and cofounder of Optiant, Inc., an award-winning provider of multiechelon inventory optimization applications. He received a PhD in OR from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. James Serio (“ Breaking the Deadlock: Improving Water-Release Policies on the Delaware River Through Operations Research ”), founder of the Delaware River Foundation, is a longtime river advocate and retired fly fishing guide. He spent countless hours learning and developing an expertise in the models, OASIS and USGS DSS, needed to aid in development of a “best science available” solution to the flow issues of the Upper Delaware River Basin. Living on the Delaware River has given him an insightful and unique perspective of the environmental needs of this widely diverse system. Francisco Solis (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is the payment systems policy and oversight manager at the Bank of Mexico, Mexico's central bank. He earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Kentucky. Gerrit Streicher (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) has a master's degree in engineering and began his career at Arcelor-Mittal, where he progressed from engineer to project leader and later manager in the engineering technology section, responsible for process automation and management information systems. Working daily with process engineers and managers, the value of models to support decision making became evident. He moved to a newly formed advanced support section and managed the process modeling group, which developed new models, enhanced existing models, and managed modeling contracts. These models ranged from basic mass balances to more advanced expert system models. At the end of 2006, he joined the Sasol OR group and is currently a senior operations researcher in the stochastic operations modeling team. He is responsible for the stochastic simulation modeling of the polymer value chains. William Tarlton (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) has been a member of Procter & Gamble's product supply team for more than 30 years. In his current role as Beauty Care Supply Chain R&D manager, Bill is responsible for identifying and implementing leading edge strategies and solutions across P&G Beauty's end-to-end consumer-driven supply network—from suppliers through retailers. He is recognized throughout P&G as a thought leader in supply chain management. Wim Van de Velde (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) has 20 years of supply chain modeling experience in the PS Analytics group at Procter & Gamble. His interests and expertise are in the areas of inventory and capacity analysis, collaborative supply chain design, and optimization. Wim holds an MBA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has coauthored several papers that have been published in Interfaces, the International Journal of Production Economics, IIE Transactions, and the European Journal of Operational Research. Hentie van den Berg (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) completed his MBA degree in 2000 after a few years working as a chemical engineer. He performed technical/engineering work in the Sasol Technology environment for more than 10 years with specific focus on the gas production (coal gasification and syngas purification) and the gas circuit areas (gas to liquid high temperature Fischer-Tropsch). Later he joined the business evaluation division of Sasol's engineering and planning team. He was responsible for the economic modeling of all gas circuit projects to evaluate project feasibility and prepare capital application documents. He was part of Sasol's group strategy and planning team and focused on project investment analysis from a company-wide perspective, evaluating projects and alternatives in terms of strategic and economic viability. He joined the Sasol OR group in 2009 and is a principal operations researcher in the stochastic operations modeling team. He is responsible for the gas factory model. Anette van der Merwe (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) holds a BSc in chemistry and mathematics and an honors degree in technology management. She has been working at Sasol since 2000 and joined the OR group in 2002. She has been doing stochastic operations modeling since 2004 and is responsible for the liquid factory model. She particularly likes that her job allows her to meet a variety of people and brings her into contact with the company's decision makers. Lorraine van Deventer (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) holds a master's degree in chemical engineering. Soon after starting her career as an engineer in training, she realized the benefits that modeling can bring to an organization. Since then she has proven the value add of modeling in diverse fields such as the pulp and paper industry, metallurgy, mining, port and rail infrastructure, and petrochemical processes. Her career at Sasol began in 2004 with process modeling, which led to further opportunities within the stochastic operations modeling team. There she played a pivotal role in developing the gas factory model and embedding discrete event simulation modeling as a core decision support tool at Sasol Synfuels. She works in Australia as a senior simulation analyst. Jaime Villaseñor (“ INDEVAL Develops a New Operating and Settlement System Using Operations Research ”) is chief risk officer and development manager at INDEVAL, the Mexican central securities depository. He obtained an MSc degree in finance from the University of Illinois and held a Fulbright scholarship. He has a bachelor's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Glenn Wegryn (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) is associate director, product supply analytics, the Procter & Gamble Company. His expertise is in the effective design and operation of supply chains using operations research, decision analysis, and visualization methods. Sean P. Willems (“ Inventory Optimization at Procter & Gamble: Achieving Real Benefits Through User Adoption of Inventory Tools ”) is associate professor of operations and technology management at Boston University's School of Management. His research focuses on supply chain design and optimization problems. Sean received his BSE in decision sciences from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and his master's in OR and PhD in operations management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cecile Wykes (“ Innovative Decision Support in a Petrochemical Production Environment ”) completed a BEng in chemical engineering at the University of Pretoria in 1992. She began her career at Sasol Synfuels, where she provided engineering support to operations in the refinery and akrylo environment. She joined the Sasol technology concept design team in 2000 and has been involved in the development of the fuels blending model. She evaluates the impact of various projects on the petrol and diesel blending systems for Sasol Synfuels (market and integration, business development, operations), Sasol planning, Natref, Sasol technology fuels research, and the OR group. She is also responsible for concept design and impact assessments.