Researcher

Christof Defryn

Research Expertise:My research group focuses on the development of quantitative solution techniques, both exact methods and (meta)heuristic algorithms, to tackle various planning problems in the fields of logistics and supply chain management. More specifically, research expertise has been established in the following domains: multi-stakeholder and collaborative logistics, the planning and scheduling of warehouse operations, speed optimisation for inland waterway vessels and lock scheduling, facility location and inventory management, supply chain network design, and logistics planning in space.

Keywords:LOGISTICS, OPTIMISATION, ALGORITHMS, SUPPLY CHAIN MODELLING, SUPPLY CHAIN COLLABORATION, LOGISTICS OPTIMIZATION, SPACE, GAME THEORY, Economics and applied economics

Disciplines:Modelling and simulation, Transport economics, Logistics and supply chain management, Game theory and bargaining theory, Mathematical methods, programming models, mathematical and simulation modelling

Research techniques:The research within our research group is founded on quantitative techniques from the field of Operations Research. Problems are preferably defined mathematically, in the form of (mixed)(integer)(linear) programs. Both exact and (meta)heuristic solution procedures are used to solve these problems. Our algorithms are thoroughly tested on a wide variety of test instances - both theoretical and based on real-life datasets. Algorithms are typically coded in C++, Rust or Python. Next to optimization algorithms, the group often make use of methods in multi-criteria decision making, (cooperative) game theory, and orbital mechanics.

Users of research expertise:Apart from the relevance of our expertise within the scientific communities, we believe that our research insights can be relevant for various parties, including governments, industry practitioners and the society. More specifically, we aim to reach out to supply chain managers, warehouse operators, and logistics service providers for research projects with a direct focus on logistical planning. Also policy makers (both local and regional/national) can benefit from our insights when it comes to decisions related to city logistics, traffic flow optimization, synchromodality and similar problems. For space-related projects, our results could be highly relevant for space organisations, firms / start-ups in the space industry and space enthusiasts.