Four award-winning theses at D-MTEC
Four former MSc students at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics have won awards for their Master’s theses, which covered topics as diverse as improving the delivery of humanitarian aid, using machine learning to detect assembly errors, innovations in last-mile logistics in e-commerce, and supply planning under conditions of uncertainty. We congratulate Fabian Alber, Charlotte Girardin, Anna Saur and Philipp Schaber on their outstanding achievements.
Fabian Alber won the 2021 Wissenschaftspreis awarded by GS1 Germany and the EHI Foundation. In his Master’s thesis, he examined how last-mile logistics services impact consumers’ purchasing decisions in e-commerce. His thesis, supervised by Professor Stephan Wagner and Felix Bergmann at the Chair of Logistics Management, was written at a propitious time – just as COVID-19 was driving a sharp increase in online sales and deliveries.
As part of his thesis, Alber developed a simulation that allows retailers to forecast the effects of innovation in their delivery portfolio on customer preferences and shopping basket abandonments. “Given that so many new retailers are entering e-commerce,” he says, “it was very exciting to simulate with which innovative delivery options online retailers can differentiate themselves from the competition. Retailers can now use the simulation to examine possible changes and innovations in their logistics services, and analyse the impact these changes will have on consumers and their business in advance.”
external page Fabian Alber graduated in 2020 and is currently working as a project manager at Stadler in the areas of automatic train operation, train protection and driverless metro trains.
Charlotte Girardin received the 2021 HUMLOG Board Award for her Master’s thesis, which she wrote at the HumOSCM Lab at the Chair of Logistics Management based on her collaborative work with Medair. Her thesis, “Evaluating the Promotion of Innovation in NGOs – Survey and Interview Based Study”, focuses on reducing resource gaps by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of aid deliveries by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the humanitarian sector. Girardin analysed two types of innovation – continuous improvement and radical innovation – and provided recommendations for how NGOs can promote them. Her work was supervised by Dr Andrew Parris, Dr Bublu (Sarbani) Thakur-Weigold and Professor Stephan Wagner.
external page Charlotte Girardin graduated in 2020 and is currently working as an investment analyst at Partners Group.
Anna Saur commenced her studies at D-MTEC in 2016 as part of the Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme (ESOP). She concluded her MSc MTEC studies in 2020 with the best overall performance in her class, thereby winning the Willi Studer Prize. Now, as a D-MTEC alumna, she has been awarded the BME Hochschulpreis for her Master’s thesis, “Integrative Supply Planning under Uncertainty in the Athletic Footwear Industry”.
“It is wonderful to see the findings of my research valued not just by my supervisors at the Chair of Production and Operations Management at D-MTEC and the Supply Chain Team at the Swiss firm external page On, but also by an external body,” Saur says. “However, the best recognition I could hope for lies in the real-world, practical impact of my thesis: I’ve been able to improve processes within the On Supply Planning Team as well as increase product availability.”
external page Anna Saur was recently appointed Head of the Sales & Operations Planning Team at On, where she began working as a trainee several years ago during her D-MTEC Master’s studies.
Last but not least, Philipp Schaber, a recent MSc MTEC graduate and former research assistant at the Chair of Productions and Operations Management, has won the 2021 Seghezzi Preis für Qualität 2021. His Master’s thesis, “Using Deep Learning to Detect Assembly Errors”, was written under the supervision of Julian Senoner and Professor Torbjørn Netland in cooperation with external page Siemens Schweiz AG. In it, Schaber developed an unsupervised machine learning approach that uses product images to detect assembly errors. The effectiveness of his approach was demonstrated in a field test at Siemens Smart Infrastructure in Zug.
external page Philipp Schaber graduated from D-MTEC in 2020 and currently works as an Associate Consultant at external page Bain & Company.
We congratulate the award-winners and wish them every success in the future, both professionally and personally.
The Awards
external page GS1 Germany and the external page EHI Foundation award the Wissenschaftspreis to chairs, junior researchers and spin-offs for pioneering work in the consumer and retail sectors. In 2021, 70 nominated projects competed for the prizes, which included awards totalling 85,000 euros in four categories: start-up, doctoral thesis, Master’s thesis and research project.
Each year, the external page Hanken School of Economics grants the external page HUMLOG Board Award to the Master’s student who writes the best thesis on a topic in humanitarian logistics. The prestigious award is endowed with 500 euros.
The external page BME Hochschulpreis honours outstanding graduate dissertations in the field of purchasing, supply chain management and logistics.
external page The Seghezzi Preis honours significant contributions in the field of quality management. The competition is held every two years by the external page Swiss Association for Quality (SAQ) and is endowed with CHF 10,000.–.