Scripties (2017)

 

• Inzet en motivatie vanaf begin oktober
• Samenkomsten op vooraf geregelde tijdstippen om de voortgang en/of resultaten gezamenlijk te bespreken
• Bij voorkeur opmaak van de masterproef in Latex
• Aanleren van de basisprincipes van C++ voor de start van het academiejaar (handleiding beschikbaar) (niet alle onderwerpen)

• Verslag 1. Zwak verslag, Het verslag bevat geen enkele vernieuwing en is puur een samenstelling van bestaand onderzoek. De onderzoeksvraag is niet afgelijnd en het toekomstig werk werd niet perfect gedefinieerd. Finale score 0/3.
• Verslag 2. Matig verslag. Het verslag bevat voldoende materiaal dat kan dienen als overzicht van de thesis, maar mist een grondig overzicht van het reeds gedane werk en bijhorende behaalde resultaten. Bovendien is het verslag niet origineel en vernieuwend. Finale score: 1.5/3.
• Verslag 3. Excellent verslag. Het verslag bevat concrete doelstellingen, voldoende vooruitgang en diepgang én een sterke kijk op het toekomstig werk. Schitterende verzorging. Finale score: 3/3.

Jaar 2. Finale thesis: De praktische richtlijnen qua lettertype, vormgeving, etc. voor het finaal thesisverslag kan je op Minerva vinden. De inhoudelijke richtlijnen die wij als OR&S onderzoeksgroep nastreven vind je via de volgende link: finale thesis.

• Een onderwerp dat in de lijn ligt van onze huidige onderzoeksactiviteiten
• Opvolging van de ontwikkeling van het programma en de analyse van de resultaten

• Literatuurstudie: ondersteunend, eventueel uitgebreid, uitgebreid of hoofddoel van de masterproef 
• Case study/oefening: neen, optioneel of hoofddoel van de masterproef 
• Software gebruik: neen, optioneel of ja 
• C++: neen, optioneel of ja (of eventueel een andere taal, bv. Java, VBA in excel, etc.)

 

 

Topic: A case study on project management (planning, risk or control): Empirical data and solutions

 

The purpose of this thesis is to collect data for projects using a standardized methodology of the OR&S research group. The students has to visit companies and collect the data, and afterwards analyse the data to apply some existing methodologies. The focus can lie on one of the following three themes (or a combination) as described below: - Project planning: Resource-constrained project schedule is a topic that is investigated widely in the literature, and the OR&S group has done a lot of research for this challenging domain. While the majority has been done on artificial data, the master thesis should now extend the existing knowledge to empirical data. - Project risk: Schedule risk analysis requires detailed risk information on the activity level as well as data about external risk factors. The more accurate the data, the more reliable the results of a traditional simulation study. Currently, it is suggested that theoretical simulations should be extended to an approach known as “lognormal core”, but no empirical validation has been made so far. This thesis focuses on data collection and empirical validation of this challenging domain. - Project control: Project control is traditionally done using Earned Value Management (EVM) methodologies. However, in the recent years, it has been shown that (1) numerous extensions are available that extend the EVM methods to more realistic methodologies and (2) theoretical results often deviate from practical and empirical experience. Techniques such as reference class forecasting help in improving these extensions, and should be validated on empirical data. More information about the existing data, as well as the tool to analyse new results, can be found at www.projectmanagement.ugent.be/research/data.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project Management, Scheduling, Risk analysis, Earned Value Management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Applications of combinatorial auctions in project planning

 

In the operations research literature, combinatorial auctions are frequently employed to model bidding processes and design fair allocation mechanisms of sets of goods to bidders. Combinatorial auctions have a wide range of applications. The goal of this master thesis is twofold. On the one hand, a literature overview is expected of applications of combinatorial auctions in the different OR subfields. On the other hand, the student is expected to investigate whether combinatorial auctions are applicable within a project scheduling context and illustrate this applicability. An academic publication is available as starting point of the analysis.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Skills: Project Management, Project Scheduling, optimisation, Combinatorial Auctions

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Planning of modular projects: heuristic solution methods

 

In the literature on Research and Development project scheduling “modular projects” are frequently used to incorporate possible activity failures during the project planning phase. The goal of the thesis is to develop multiple metaeuristic solution approaches to schedule modular projects. As a basis for the analysis the student can use the academic publication: “a fast greedy heuristic for scheduling modular projects”. The student is expected to compare the performance of the presented algorithms and provide managerial recommendations.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Skills: Project Planning, metaheuristics

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Planning of multi skilled projects: a matheuristic approach

 

In the project scheduling literature the multi-skilled nature of resources is often ignored. Recently however, this assumption has been relaxed and the explicit modelling of multi-skilled resources is incorporated in the project planning phase. The goal of this master thesis is to develop a diverse dataset that complements the existing datasets in the multi-skilled project scheduling literature. The student will develop a matheuristic to solve the created problem instances. The academic publication: “Priority-Based Heuristics for the Multi-Skill Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem” can be used as a starting point for the analysis.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Skills: Project Planning, optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project Planning with flexible resource profiles: A Case Study

 

In the vast majority of the project scheduling literature resource requirements of activities are assumed to be fixed during the processing of activities. In reality, this requirement usually does not hold. The student is expected to collect company data on projects with flexible resource profiles (at least 5 projects). The Flexible Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (F-RCPSP) will be studied using this real-life data and its practical applications will be tested. The focus is on the project planning phase. The collected data will be analysed by using and comparing existing state-of-art techniques. The academic publication: “MIP models for resource-constrained project scheduling with flexible resource profiles” can be used as a starting point for the analysis.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Vaardigheden: Project Scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A comparative study between different networkanalysis methods

 

The traditional approach of network analysis through activity-on-the-node networks has led to the development of several network generators in the project scheduling literature. The network generator RanGen was developed at our research group and exhibits strong similarities with the “Design Structure Matrix” (DSM) methodology. Moreover, a recent publication “The concept of DSM and ADT integration in the product design process” confirmed these similarities. The goal of this thesis is to analyse the different approaches and to come up with a new and improved RanGen approach that combines the concepts and insights of the different network analysis techniques.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Skills: Project Management, Scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project scheduling with hazardous materials : A Case Study

 

In project planning studies the impact of hazardous material removal on the project plan and performance is frequently ignored. In the construction industry, where the use of hazardous materials in projects is ubiquitous (e.g. asbestos removal), this approach is not viable. The student collects data from companies that deal with projects involving hazardous waste (at least 5 projects). The focus is on the planning phase of these projects. The student analyses the collected data and compares this data with project plans in which the uncertainty involved with hazardous materials removal is incorporated by means of several scheduling policies. A simulation experiment has to be conducted to indicate in which situations the different scheduling policies have a favourable effect on the project plan and its execution.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jeroen Burgelman

Skills: Project Scheduling, Optimisation, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A heuristic approach for the project scheduling problem with flexible project structures: hybrid priority rules

 

The traditional project scheduling problem explicitly assumes that the project structure is uniquely defined and known in advance. In many practical situations, however, there exist multiple alternative ways to execute subparts of the project. The resulting problem is called project scheduling with flexible project structures and consists of two subproblems: a choice must be made amongst the different alternative execution modes of the project and the resulting deterministic project structure should be scheduled. Due to the complexity of the problem, most research papers propose a solution procedure that is based on a two-stage approach. However, such an approach will not yield a global optimisation as both subproblems are solved independently. In this thesis, the student will develop a hybrid priority-rule based heuristic procedure for the proposed scheduling problem. The aim of this thesis is to compare and validate the new hybrid priority rules with best-known priority rules in literature on artificial data.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Reactive strategies for the project scheduling problem with flexible project structures

 

In the traditional project scheduling problem, most researchers explicitly assume that the project structure is fixed and known in advance. Due to the rapidly changing business environment, this is neither possible nor desirable in most practical situations. Therefore, project managers consider different alternative ways to execute subparts of the project and construct so-called flexible project structures. Consequently, the resulting scheduling problem consists of two subproblems: an alternative execution mode should be selected for each work package and the resulting project with a fixed structure should be scheduled. However, the initial schedule might become suboptimal and the decisions made in the past could turn out impossible or impractical in case that disruptions occur in the project environment. Therefore, the student will develop reactive strategies that limit the impact of disruptions on the project schedule and compare them for different degrees of allowable decision-making instability.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: The impact of learning effects on decision-making in project schedules with flexible structures

 

The traditional project scheduling problem explicitly assumes that the project structure is uniquely defined and known in advance. In many practical situations, however, there exist multiple alternative ways to execute subparts of the project. The resulting problem is called project scheduling with flexible project structures and consists of two subproblems: a choice must be made amongst the different alternative execution modes of the project and the resulting deterministic project structure should be scheduled. Each of these alternatives might be subject to different learning effects that quantify the transition of knowledge within the scope of the project. In this thesis, the student will develop a model to quantify learning effects and propose strategies to capitalise them in different types of projects.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Contract design for projects with different execution alternatives

 

In most practical situations, project are executed by in-house (i.e. core teams) or outhouse (i.e. consultants) experts in order to deliver a pre-determined outcome given time and budget constraints. Therefore, there is a clear knowledge gap between the project contractor and owner against which the project owner will protect himself through well-considered contract design. Within the scope of the contract, however, the project contractor will have a certain degree of freedom to execute parts of the project in one of multiple alternative ways. The question remains which types of contracts should be designed by project contractors/owners in this situation. In this thesis, the student will design contract strategies from the perspective of the project contractor/owner and monitor the impact on the performance of the project for different project settings.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A case-based approach to measure and evaluate the cost of flexibility

 

Due to the ever-increasing complexity of the rapidly changing business environment, the project management community has promoted future research on the ability of flexibility to face uncertainty in the project environment. Therefore, some researchers have started to model flexibility in the field of project scheduling. In this way, project schedules are constructed that consists of different alternatives in order to tackle the uncertainty in the project environment in a proactive way. Most studies implicitly assume that the inclusion of more flexibility in the project can be obtained at no additional cost although this is seldom the case in practical situations. In this thesis, the student will collect empirical data to provide a practical approach on how to measure the cost of flexibility. Moreover, the student will apply a heuristic approach to provide managerial insights on the flexibility/cost trade-off in project scheduling.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Robust project scheduling using fuzzy set theory: alternative project parameters

 

The fuzzy set theory is used in a wide range of research domains to consistently collect and model inaccurate and/or unknown information, also in project scheduling and control where the values of different project parameters are seldom exactly known beforehand. The fuzzy numbers allow project managers to use assessments of experts (e.g. with respect to the activity durations) in a systematic manner to prepare (robust) project schedules. The goal of this thesis is to investigate whether the application of fuzzy set theory within robust project scheduling can be extended to alternative (rather than the traditional) project parameters. The student is expected to illustrate and test these extensions based on a case study or artificial project data.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Tom Servranckx

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project portfolio management – Case study: Analysis of totally dedicated resources/employees to a particular project of a company

 

Nowadays most companies work in a multi-project environment and have a whole portfolio of projects running at the same time. One way of providing these projects with resources is by assigning at the beginning of the planning horizon a part of the resources/employees to every project. In this case sharing resources between projects is not allowed. The purpose of this thesis will be to collect and work with real-life data of projects, which are situated in such an environment. On this data existing scheduling methods can be applied and improved in order to see the consequences of this resource sharing restriction. Eventually the insights should lead to some interesting conclusions and recommendations.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jérome Bridelance

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Project portfolio management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project portfolio management – Team composition: Analysis of introducing additional external resources into the company

 

In this globalised and customised world, groups of resources/employees have to be composed with very specific knowledge, abilities and/or skills in order to complete a project successfully. Besides this, most companies are also working on a whole portfolio of projects, so providing all these resources in-house becomes hard to achieve. The purpose of this thesis will be to gather real-life data from companies working in such an environment and additionally apply/improve existing scheduling methods on this data. In that way you should be able to analyse the impact of attracting external resources/employees to complete the required group instead of only working with in-house resources.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jérome Bridelance

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Project portfolio management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project portfolio management – Analysing different ways of clustering projects wherein resources can be freely shared

 

Companies working in a multi-project environment have a whole portfolio of projects running at the same time. They can assign resources at the beginning of the planning horizon to each project and schedule each of them as a single project without the need to take the other projects into consideration. The purpose of this thesis will be to consider different ways of forming clusters of projects wherein resources can be freely shared and used by all projects in the cluster. By gathering real-life data an analysis should be made of how the company’s objective is impacted by these different ways of clustering.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jérome Bridelance

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Project portfolio management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project portfolio management – Analysing the geographical location of resources in order to optimize the company’s objective(s)

 

A company’s resources can be placed on different geographical locations. A resource placed at one particular location can be used by all the projects in the vicinity. Consequently when taking decisions about the position of resources a couple of things have to be taken into account: e.g. serve as many projects as possible, minimize the number of transfers of resources to other positions… This last one can be necessary if a company has too many projects in its portfolio for its limited capacity of a particular resource. The purpose of this thesis will be to come up with a model to optimize the geographical locations of the resources, taking the restrictions and the company’s objective(s) into consideration. Testing this model on small examples should lead to some interesting conclusions and recommendations.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jérome Bridelance

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Project portfolio management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project portfolio management – The use, influence and consequences of intangible resources in a multi-project environment

 

In these modern times, resources are no longer limited to the tangible ones, like for example machines. People are getting more and more convinced about the importance of intangible resources: skills, technology, knowledge… That’s why companies spend a lot of time and money in the investment and transfer of their intangible resources. The purpose of this thesis will be to investigate the different forms of intangible resources and which influence they can have on your portfolio of projects. What has to be taken into account when dealing with intangible resources and how can they be incorporated in portfolio scheduling?

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Jérome Bridelance

Skills: Project scheduling, Optimisation, Project portfolio management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Project risk monitoring and management: a simulation study

 

In a recent study, a novel approach is introduced to assess the project risk and to review which preventive actions could be taken during the planning phase to reduce this risk. This approach has only been validated on a single project. In this thesis, an extensive simulation study should be performed to evaluate this technique on a large and diverse dataset. Further, based on the insights gained from this simulation study, improvements to this approach could be recommended.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Annelies Martens

Skills: Dynamic Scheduling, Project Risk Management, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A case study on the attributes of corrective actions and their impact on the project outcome

 

The goal of project control is monitoring the project performance in order to detect deviations from the plan and, when necessary, take corrective actions to get the project back on track. In recent literature, several computational and empirical studies have proposed methodologies to improve the monitoring process. However, little research on the corrective actions that should be taken when a project is endangered has been performed. In computational experiments, the cost and impact of these corrective actions is often determined arbitrarily. The purpose of this case study is to investigate the nature of these corrective actions and their impact on the project outcome, such that more realistic input parameters can be used in computational experiments.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Annelies Martens

Skills: Project Management, Earned Value Management

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A simulation study on the optimal size of time and budget buffers

 

When projects are being executed, it is inevitable that they will not go entirely according to the plan. Therefore, project buffers are often installed to protect the project from these deviations. Both time buffers to protect the project deadline as well as budget buffers to protect the project cost can be installed. In literature, several approaches are proposed to determine the optimal size of these buffers. However, these buffer sizes are determined assuming that only a time or budget buffer is considered. However, the optimal time buffer can be decreased by assuming a budget buffer to take corrective actions. Similarly, a smaller optimal cost budget buffer could be obtained when a time buffer is considered. The purpose of this simulation study is to examine the trade-off between time and budget buffer sizes, and to develop an approach to determine the optimal sizes for both buffers.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Annelies Martens

Skills: Dynamic Scheduling, Earned Value Management, Buffer management, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A simulation study on the efficiency and reliability of project control tolerance limits during project execution

 

The goal of project control is monitoring the project performance in order to detect deviations from the plan and, when necessary, take corrective actions to get the project back on track. Tolerance limits for project control are established to generated warning signals when a project is endangered. These warning signals act as triggers for action to the project manager. Generally, tolerance limits are expected to be more accurate in the later phases of the project, since more information regarding the project execution is available compared to the early phases. Therefore, the goal of this simulation study is to examine the efficiency and reliability of tolerance limits throughout the project lifecycle.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Annelies Martens

Skills: Dynamic Scheduling, Buffer management, Schedule control, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: A simulation study on the predictive power of the PV

 

During project execution, project forecasting techniques can be used to predict the final project duration or cost. In a recent paper, an approach has been proposed to improve the project forecasting performance by using the predictive power of the project planned value. This approach has been validated using a limited number of real-life data. The goal of this thesis is to examine the performance of this approach, compare this approach to the existing project forecasting techniques, and propose improvements when necessary by performing an extensive simulation study.

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Annelies Martens

Skills: Dynamic Scheduling, Earned Value Management, Project forecasting, Simulation

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students.

Substantive aspects:

 

Topic: Hybrid strategies for product portfolio demand prediction

 

Traditionally companies have used time series models (ARIMA, SARIMA, Holt, Winters,...) to predict the demand for their products. However, due to ever increasing demand for customer customization, shortening product life cycles and and the advent of online shopping these techniques are no longer able to make predictions for the majority of a product portfolio since they are mainly suited to products for which there is a reasonably high demand. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate how several different techniques can be combined to make predictions better. Specifically the use of clustering techniques to use historic information on related products for new product introductions and the use of causal models that use information on product categories, brands, online search trends,... are to be investigated. Moreover, the key goal of this research is to determine what a hybrid strategy for a complete portfolio could look like through a combination of various techniques (potentially weighted based on the sales volume of a specific product). The key goal of this dissertation is to conduct an experiment on real data from a mid-market retail company, in order to validate the conclusions of this research. 

 

Advisor: Mario Vanhoucke 

Contact: Louis-Philippe Kerkhove

Skills: Operational research

Extra: This thesis is suitable for two students. Use of LaTeX is mandatory.

Substantive aspects: