Research

Hospital Bed Management - Bettenmanagement in Krankenhäusern
The number and allocations of hospital beds in their respective stations is one of the premier economic ressources of a commercially successful hospital. Furthermore, overcrowing can create undue workload for care personnel and limit the ability to meet patients' needs. Using discrete multi-criteria opimisation, we work at improving centrally managed bed planning.

Funding: VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist
Contact: Tabea Brandt

Appointment Scheduling for GPs
GPs are the foundation of the German healthcare system. Therefore, the scheduling of GP appointments is of special importance. Optimisation can be used to reduce both patient waiting times and practise utlisation. Here, we develop both exact and heuristic methods for effective planning.

Funding: VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist
Contact: Sabrina Schmitz

Mobile Medical Care Centers
Mobile Medical Care Centers are a promising avenue to improve medical care, especially in rural areas, where both demography and decreasing numbers of resident doctors pose major challenges. Using adaptive and robust modelling we search for solutions both for the corresponding location planning and scheduling problems.

Funding: VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist
Contact: Martin Comis

Pharmacy Emergency Service Scheduling
Supplying medicial products is one of the fundamental building blocks of a functioning healthcare system. To provide those even outside of regular opening hours, each day over 1400 pharmacies in Germany carry out 24h-emergency-shifts. In cooperation with the public Pharmacy Association Nordrhein, which represents more than 2000 pharmacies, we develop a shift planning system. Using methods from discrete optimisation, this ensures both adequate coverage and fair distribution of emergency shifts across pharmacies.

Funding: BMBF HealthFact
Contact: Timo Gersing, Sophia Wrede

Aiming Strategies of Heliostats
Solar tower power plants are one major technology in solar power generation and renewables in general. Every such power plant contains a receiver, which is positioned at the top of a central tower. Using adjustable mirrors, called heliostats, sunlight gets focused on the receiver, where it is used to heat up a liquid which is then used as part of a standard thermal power plant. We developed optimal aiming strategies for heliostats, which allow for boht efficient energy production and long material lifespan, considering various uncertain scenarios.

Funding: RWTH Seed Fund
Contact: Sascha Kuhnke

Childcare Place Assignment
Based on the German childcare laws (Kinderförderungsgesetz /KiföG), since 2013 every child has the right to an quality childcare place until the end of their third year of life. In this project we analysed and optimised the allocation of childcare places using agent-based simulation and discrete optimisation. We developed and evaluated several planning approaches, which considered the interests of the relevant status groups: Families, childcare providers, lawmakers and administration.

Contact: Christoph Grüne

UnRAVeL – UNcertainty and Randomness in Algorithms, VErification and Logic
The graduate school UnRAVeL is an interdisciplinary group aimed at improving both probabilistic modelling and the analysis of uncertainty. Researchers come from the areas of theoretical computer science, management science, engineering and mathematics.

For more information please consult the UnRAVeL website.