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Presentation at the OR 2026 in Passau

From September 1 to 4, 2026, Hendrik Busmann attended the International Conference on Operations Research in Passau. On Tuesday, the focus was on workshops for doctoral students. From Wednesday to Friday, researchers and experts from Germany and around the world came together under the theme “Converging Streams in Decision Making.”

The presentations on current research topics provided him with inspiration for his work in Magdeburg. With his paper “A Rollout Approach to Dynamic Flow-Shop Scheduling with Stochastic Returns in Circular Manufacturing,” he presented his own research findings for the first time and discussed them with colleagues.

Now it's time to sort through these impressions and put those ideas into action.

3rd Copenhagen School of Stochastic Programming (CSSP-3)

From August 19 to 21, Aheli Das and Ornela Sahatciu joined the University of Copenhagen's Department of Mathematical Sciences for the 3rd Copenhagen School of Stochastic Programming (CSSP-3), an intensive course on the mathematical modeling of decision-making under uncertainty. The course was organized by Trine Boomsma, Jiali Deng, Francesco Lugani, and Giovanni Pantuso, and supported by the PhD School of SCIENCE, University of Copenhagen. Over three days, the course walked participants through the field's core methodology, moving from foundations to advanced topics: Introduction to Stochastic Programming, Formalization of Stochastic Programs, Chance-Constrained Stochastic Programming, Stochastic Programs with Stochastic Dominance Constraints, Mixed-Integer Stochastic Programming, Stochastic Programs with Decision-Dependent Uncertainty. The course drew PhD students — and other researchers working on optimization under uncertainty — from mathematics, engineering, and economics backgrounds, coming from universities across Denmark and abroad. The scientific program was complemented by a welcome reception on the first evening and a course dinner on the second evening, created space for participants to connect informally with both lecturers and peers. For our chair, participation in CSSP-3 was a valuable opportunity to engage directly with leading researchers in stochastic programming and to connect with a broader community of scholars working on optimization under uncertainty.

Presentation at the IFORS 2026 in Vienna

From July 12 to 17, 2026, Janis Neufeld traveled to Vienna for IFORS2026, the triennial conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies. Together with nearly 3,000 participants from around the world, he experienced a week filled with exciting technical presentations, fresh insights, and interesting encounters. In his presentation, “A Decomposition Approach for Large-Scale Rolling Stock Scheduling with Heterogeneous Fleets,” he presented the results of a current research project he is working on with colleagues at TU Dresden. In addition to the impressive city of Vienna, it was above all the inspiring presentations and personal exchanges with researchers from around the world that made the conference an enriching and special experience.

New publication in Operations Research Perspectives

We are pleased to announce a new high-ranking publication with the participation of Janis Neufeld in the journal Zeitschrift Operation Research Perspectives! How can factories and greenhouses make better use of their resources when several jobs can run at the same time? Our paper introduces a new scheduling approach and shows how smarter planning can increase efficiency and reduce waiting times.

Peer-reviewed article

Ahmed Missaoui, Janis S. Neufeld, Barry O’Sullivan Local search methods for the cumulative flow shop scheduling problem, Operations Research Perspectives 17 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orp.2026.100403

Abstract

Scheduling problems are typically studied under the assumption that each resource can process only one job at a time. However, in many real-world settings, resources are capable of processing multiple jobs simultaneously, leading to cumulative scheduling problems, where each resource can process several jobs up to a specified capacity. While cumulative scheduling has been investigated in job shops and parallel-machine contexts, it remains unexplored in flow shop environments. In this work, we introduce the cumulative flow shop scheduling problem as a generalization of the classical flow shop. We propose a mixed-integer programming formulation along with two metaheuristic approaches – an iterated local search algorithm and an iterated greedy algorithm – designed to minimize total flow time. Both methods incorporate problem-specific features, such as an adapted initial solution and a rescheduling mechanism to improve resource utilization. With this, they demonstrate strong performance in a comprehensive computational study. Additionally, we analyze trade-offs between total flow time and resource utilization, and investigate how varying job sizes and resource capacities affect outcomes. Our findings provide actionable managerial insights and open new avenues for research on cumulative scheduling problems.

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Presentation at the Summer Meeting of the VHB Scientific Commission on Logistics (WK LOG)

Presentation at the Summer Meeting of the VHB Scientific Commission on Logistics (WK LOG): Focus on Exchange and Research

This year’s summer meeting of the VHB’s Scientific Commission on Logistics (WK LOG), which is dedicated to promoting logistics in research and teaching, provided an excellent platform for professional exchange.

Special thanks go to the organizers, led by Frank Meisel, for the successful event in Kiel.

On Saturday, Janis Neufeld presented the research paper “A Decomposition Approach for Large-Scale Rolling Stock Scheduling with Heterogeneous Fleets,” co-authored with Paul Päprer, Martin Scheffler, and Udo Buscher from TU Dresden. The paper highlights innovative approaches to the efficient scheduling of large, heterogeneous rolling stock fleets in rail transport.

Thank you very much for the interesting discussions and valuable insights!

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