The 4th International Conference on Production and Project Evaluation will be held in Guimarães, Portugal, on the 20th and 21st September 2018. It is organized by ALGORITMI Research Center, through its research line on Industrial Engineering and Management, School of Engineering, University of Minho.

The main goal of this Conference is to join together academics and professionals from a variety of fields with interest on the issues of production economics and project evaluation and management. The Conference is expected to provide a forum of debate for researchers and professionals, aiming to support the sharing of experiences, promoting cross-knowledge and strengthening the academic-industry relationship.KEYNOTE SPEAKERS – Programme

Thurday, 20.September, 11h45-12h30 (anfiteatro 0.08-0.10, Edifício 11):

Professor Chrissoleon T. Papadopoulos – Stochastic Models of Manufacturing and Supply Chain Systems: Analysis and Synthesis Techniques

Outline of the talk:

Initially an outline of the evolution  of manufacturing systems, including supply chain systems, is  given. The need for models and solution tools for the analysis and synthesis of such systems is discussed. The models for the design and operation of manufacturing systems are classified as performance evaluation and generative or optimization models. The classical 2X2 formulation/ solution decision methodology in the context of these models is treated.  Examples of exact and approximate models of production lines are given including a queueing network model and a stochastic automata network model (as exact models) and a decomposition technique model (as an approximate model). Then the integration of supply and production systems is introduced. Finally, digitized production systems are defined with an introduction to industry 4.0 and logistics 4.0 followed by a description of  the nine pillars of technological advancement. The evolving role of the mathematical modeler of manufacturing and logistics systems is discussed in the context of smart production systems and their modeling.

Short CV:

Professor Chrissoleon T. Papadopoulos received the B.S. degree from Department of Mathematics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, the M.Sc. degree in Operations Research and Informatics from the National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, and the Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway (ex. UCG), Galway, Ireland, in 1981, 1983, and 1989, respectively.
Dr. Chrissoleon T. Papadopoulos is a Professor in Quantitative Methods in Production, Operations, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, at the School of Economic Sciences, Department of Business Administration, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (with a non-pay leave for 3 years since September 2016). He is Professor and coordinator of the Master of Engineering Management program of the School of Engineering of Nazarbayev University (August 2016 – present).

Chrissoleon Papadopoulos’ primary research covers the areas of manufacturing and supply chains: stochastic modeling and design of manufacturing and service/logistics systems. Before joining the University of the Aegean and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, he served for 5 years as Logistics Manager at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Hellas (now Hewllett-Packard Hellas).
He has published several journal papers (in IJPR, Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics, EJOR, IJPE, IIE Transactions, C&IE, C&OR, Omega, among others), 2 books (published by Chapman & Hall, 1993 and Springer, 2009) and 2 edited books (published by Kluwer, 2003 and Springer, 2006), and 1 Chapter in a book published by Springer, 2013, in the area of Stochastic Modeling of Manufacturing and Service Operations (SMMSO) and many international and national Conference papers. He was involved in a number of research projects funded by national and European funds (Thales).
He is invited member of the Editorial Board of the International journals: International Journal of Production Research (IJPR), Computers and Industrial Engineering (C&IE), Decision Making in Manufacturing and Services, and he has served as a Department Editor of the IIE Transactions and other journals in Operations Management and Logistics/Supply Chain Management. He is Guest co-Editor in several Volumes/Special Issues in the area of SMMSO of the journal Annals of Operations Research (ANOR) , two Volumes of IIE Transactions and one Volume of OR Spectrum and of IJPR.
He has been the founding Organizer/Chair of the Series of International Conferences in the area of SMMSO and has organized the first five Conferences of this Series (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005).

Friday, 21.September, 11h45-12h30 (anfiteatro 0.08-0.10, Edifício 11):

Professor Paul Benneworth: Evaluating the societal impacts of university research: lessons from the social sciences and humanities

Outline of the talk:

With increasing sums of public funds becoming invested in science and research within the higher education sector, policy-makers and politicians have become increasingly insistent in demanding that universities account for these resources in terms of the ways that these research activities create benefits for society.  Since the 1980s, universities and policy-makers have been drawn to the ways in which university knowledge has been commercialised, through patents and licensing activities and the creation of spin-off companies. With the rise of these demands for research to create impact, the science policy community has all too easily fallen back on this knowledge of commercialisation activities, and created measures and metrics of research impact that relate to easily countable financial metrics, often related to the US’s Association of University Technology Manager Key Performance Indicators that emerged in America in the 1980s. But focusing on these contractual relationships is seductive when one looks at eth eye-catching extraordinary success stories of commercialisation, such as the University of Leuven, who generated $1bn over 20 years for a patent on “tissue-type plasminogen activator”, arguably the first successful biotechnology medicine.

Researchers, university managers and policy makers alike are now worried that this policy focus is running ahead of our understanding of the manifold ways in which research creates benefits for societies in all kinds of ways that are not simplistically reducible to financial transactions.  The underlying here is that the exceptional is a very poor guide for general research evaluation practises, and there have been difficulties in generally understanding the processes by which research activities, creating knowledge lead to wider socio-economic development processes.  In this keynote, we look at the issue through the lens of the Social Sciences and Humanities, for which these transactional measures are widely recognized as being extremely poor metrics for capturing what matters about this research.  Building on Spaapen and Van Drooge’s model of Productive Transactions, we note that effective research impact is associated with two kinds of progress, the scientific and the societal, in which the productive interaction is coupled between the engaging scientist and societal partner, in ways that allows both partners to benefit from it.  We propose extending this conceptual framework to cover three additional elements, namely this parallel progression in scientific and societal systems, the coupling between the two systems, and visible reshaping of those underlying systems in the course of the progress.  We then illustrate this by proposing a typology of impact pathways, highlighting the different configurations of these four elements through which societal impact emerges.  On this basis, and arguing that these pathways are just as applicable to the harder sciences as to SSH, we are then able to propose an outline set of principles for better evaluating the societal impacts of university research that can account for the myriad ways in which scientists create everyday impact for wider societal benefit.

This keynote draws on work undertaken jointly with Dr. Reetta Muhonen (University of Tampere) & Dr. Julia Olmos-Peñuela (University of Valencia).

Short CV:

Paul Benneworth (@heravalue) is a senior researcher at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente, the Netherlands, and Agderforskning, Kristiansand, Norway. Paul’s research focuses on the dynamics of innovation and societal development and in particular the ways in which cooperations and coalitions emerge between research and societal partners in producing socio-economic development. He is currently leading Working Group 2 of the COST Funded European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and Humanities (ENRESHH) that focuses specifically on societal impact of research.  He has been chief scientist of projects for a range of research funders including the European Framework Programme/ERA-NET, research councils in the UK, the Netherlands and Norway as well as a wide range of government and not-for-profit funders. He is the editor of 8 scientific works, including three in the RSA Cities & Regions series. He has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scientific articles in the last decade, serves as reviewer for a range of journals, research councils and funding agencies internationally and is currently acting as special scientific adviser to three research council funded projects in Norway, Austria and Belgium.

More information: https://coutin68.wixsite.com/icopev2018