Coping with uncertainty in customer demand

Natasja Sluijk (foto: Bart van Overbeeke) PhD researcher Natasja Sluijk shows how mathematics can help improve logistics processes. How do you distribute drinking water fairly across an area recently hit by a natural disaster? Or how can you make sure you have enough bottles of water, granola bars and fruit in your delivery van to refill all the vending machines at a school when you don't know how full they are? TU/e researcher Natasja Sluijk has developed mathematical models to address these challenges in transportation planning. On Thursday 23 November she succesfully defended her dissertation at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences. Sluijk obtained her master's degree at Erasmus University in the field of Operations Research, an area of research focused on the application of mathematical methods in order to optimize processes. "I've always been interested in mathematics and I decided I wanted to do something with it," she says. On top of that, her father and grandfather, both of whom used to be truck drivers, fueled her interest in transportation and logistics. "That's how the seed was planted." The PhD candidate is also very intrigued by uncertainty.