TU/e and Merck Animal Health collaboration is finalist for the 2022 INFORMS Franz Edelman Award

INFORMS has selected six finalists for the annual Franz Edelman Award, the world’s leading award for achievement in the practice of analytics and operations research. The TU/e and Merck Animal Health collaboration is one of the finalists.

“Around 10 graduate students from our Operations Management and Logistics Program were involved in various phases of this project. Their contributions have been essential in making this project a success,” says Tugce Martagan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences.  TU/e and Merck Animal Health have been working on this project for four years and developed a portfolio of optimization models and decision support tools to improve the efficiency of biomanufacturing operations.   

The INFORMS website elaborates: ‘Biomanufacturing uses living organisms (i.e., viruses and bacteria) to grow active ingredients in vaccines and therapeutics. This high-tech manufacturing process generates challenges not found in many other industries. Additionally, the high cost of equipment and labor-intensive nature of operations precluded the ability to just add capacity. Operations research was critical to meet these challenges. The initial implementation had a 30%-50% increase in the output of critical medicines in specific areas.

The 2022 Edelman Award will be presented at the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Houston, Texas, on April 3-5.

More information on the Franz Edelman Award