Insights to read to lead & succeed in 2023
With the new year just around the corner, we’ve prepared you a list of top insights from the past year. We hope it helps you get ideas and inspiration to kickstart your thinking for 2023.
Happy reading from ORTEC’s Insights team
1. We must bulletproof supply chains to streamline disrupted flows
Automotive manufacturers have idled production, beverage producers are faced with glass bottle shortages, and demand for paper has been vastly outstripping supply. All this is compounded by acute staff shortages across a variety of industries. Is there any way of avoiding these types of problems in the future? “There’s no reason to stop using global supply chains altogether, unless you’re considering environmental factors. But we must do a better job in identifying bottlenecks and make the system less prone to vulnerabilities, so as to ensure that potential disruptions have a less detrimental impact.”
2. Optimizers for workforce scheduling: 10 myths
Personnel is scarce everywhere. Recruitment, retention, sick leave, and employee satisfaction are important topics now in almost every industry. Workforce scheduling solutions help companies solve these problems. These solutions contain optimization modules, which means that a computer algorithm proposes the best schedule for the coming period or during the day, while respecting all kinds of hard and soft constraints. But is a mathematical optimizer helpful to create the best work environment for the employees? Well, there’s more to optimizers than we often think.
3. Scalable impact with analytics by Achmea & ORTEC
Together we can achieve more. This is evident from ORTEC's relationship with Achmea and the impact we make together. In 2019, we started an enterprise-wide data and analytics program to find an answer to Achmea's main question: "We're creating a lot of value with data & analytics, but how can we do so in a more scalable way?" In this article we share the success factors that we have jointly learned along the way: 6 tips for scalable impact with analytics.
An interview between Achmea & ORTEC
4. How dynamic time slot booking improves service and efficiency in e-logistics
The push toward e-commerce will remain strong in the coming years. Customer service expectations, like same day deliveries, will also increase. How can retailers, and grocery retailers in particular, stay profitable, while transforming into home delivery and omni-channel operations? Dynamic time slot booking, also called timeslotting, can be a powerful tool. This article gives answers on how dynamic time slot booking improves service and efficiency in e-logistics.
5. Algorithms pave the way for objectivity
In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about technologies that allegedly reinforce inequality, as evidenced by books on algorithms like Weapons of Math Destruction. Discussions about facial recognition software that does not recognize non-white people and major issues such as the Dutch benefits scandal have taken center stage in this debate - and rightly so. The reputation of ‘the algorithm’, it seems, has taken a hit. Undeservedly so, if you were to ask Gerrit Timmer: “Algorithms pave the way for objectivity, giving us the opportunity to move in the right direction.”
6. Companies need to push multiple buttons instead of just one
Over the past century, businesses have made huge improvements when it comes to optimal and cost-efficient planning, as well the organization of processes. However, efficient processes alone won’t solve the challenges of today’s world. Because demands and needs are changing, traditional performance indicators are now being outcompeted by others, such as customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and impact on Sustainable Development Goals. (SDGs) The puzzle of success is becoming more challenging. Businesses will need to adopt new methods to thrive, and perhaps even to survive. Data and mathematics can help to solve the puzzle; fortunately, there is always more than one button that businesses can push.
7. Transitioning to zero-emission mobility:
A few years ago, the need for a transition to zero emission mobility was still debated. Today, the urgency is clear. Policy makers around the globe are turning ambitions into strict regulations. Transportation and supply chain managers are facing a complex challenge: can they start transitioning to zero-emission mobility at a reasonable cost, without impacting daily operations? It’s an issue they can no longer postpone.
8. Data & algorithms: blessing or curse?
In the title of my 1993 dissertation, I used the word “algorithm”. Few people knew the term back then, but today everyone does, and with that it seems to represent something untrustworthy: algorithms are opaque, discriminatory, and might even bring you into discredit. Just think of the Dutch childcare benefits scandal that has vilified so many innocent parents in the Netherlands. But do we really know what algorithms are?
An article by Goos Kant, Managing Partner at ORTEC and Professor of Logistics Optimization.
9. Valuable air: 50% of what we transport is packaged air
PostNL has four guiding principles in its sustainability transition: CO2 reduction, livability, transparency and transformation, together with both customers and colleagues. Rogier Havelaar, who is responsible for sustainability at PostNL’s largest business unit, identifies three logistics trends: urbanization, new customer demands and data. The company has already been innovating at the intersection between sustainability and business for some time now: “Our targets are aligned with the provisions enshrined in the Paris Agreement; the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has officially established this. We also stated last year that we wanted to accelerate our greening process, and we are investing an additional 80 million euros for that purpose.”
10. Research that resulted in U-Prevent: ‘The average patient doesn't exist’
Between the theoretical question of whether clinical data can be used to estimate cardiovascular risks for individual patients, and the online calculation tool U-Prevent as it stands, there is a lot of very high-level research. That research and numerous collaborative projects have led, among other things, to U-Prevent being included in the Cardiovascular Risk Management (CVRM) guideline of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Co-founder Jannick Dorresteijn outlines the genesis of U-Prevent.
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