**Group**
The open position is at the Operations Planning, Accounting & Control group (OPAC). OPAC currently consists of 5 full professors, 5 associate professors, 15 assistant professors, 9 postdoctoral fellows, and 27 PhD candidates. The faculty teaches and conducts research in the area of operations planning and control in manufacturing, maintenance services, logistics and supply chains. Research is generally quantitative in nature, while many of the researchers also engage in empirical research. The OPAC group is responsible within the university for all teaching in the areas of operations management, transportation, manufacturing operations, reliability and maintenance, and accounting and finance, both at undergraduate and graduate level. The OPAC group has an extensive industrial network, which gives direct access to challenging operations management problems, new technologies, and empirical data.
**Logistics Community Brabant (LCB)**
The position is funded by Logistics Community Brabant (LCB). LCB is the unique place gathering scholars who work and live at the heart of logistics and who are daily engaged in growth, development, and innovation, from both theory and practice. Within LCB, the logistics sector in Brabant is preparing itself for the far-reaching economic changes that are coming. For example, LCB ensures the accelerated exchange of logistics knowledge between companies and knowledge institutions with the support of the government, the Ministry of Defence, students, and professionals. LCB's unique profile is the optimal interface between the business community and knowledge institutions with two goals: accelerated translation of knowledge into the business community and impulses for logistics education and research into the knowledge institutions. Towards this end, LCB offers (pro-actively) attractive knowledge products, such as knowledge maintenance contracts, educational partnerships and fresh brains tailored to the needs of the companies. LCB is managed as a real company and supported by the new and unique collaboration between the knowledge institutions of the Noord-Brabant region. The result is accelerated innovation, particularly in the areas of digital transformation, sustainability, circular economy, and omni-channel, for both business models for companies and scientific and practical research for knowledge institutions. In this way, the competitiveness of the logistics sector, the municipality of Breda, and the Noord-Brabant region as a whole, can be strengthened in a sustainable manner, which leads to extra turnover and jobs. For the knowledge institutions, LCB increases the possibilities for scientific and practical research. In time, Brabant region could become the smartest logistics region with a central hub function in Breda, with the ambition of becoming the number one logistics knowledge region in the world.
The theme related to this position is Liveable cities: this theme has been in high priority on the agenda for years because of the silting up of cities and the increasing pressure from urban distribution. E-commerce and 'Final mile' discussions are then topical. Social developments have greatly increased the acceptance of sustainable solutions. LCB wants to experiment, initiate, and promote logistic innovations that keeps the city sustainable and social inclusive with zero emissions.
**PhD project**
The PhD project focuses on new sustainable logistic concepts to deal with the increasing complexity for logistics within cities. Urbanization leads to increasing pressure on the limited available infrastructure for the movements of people and goods. Local governments even want to reduce the amount of public space available for traffic further. With new smart mobility services and logistic concepts, less infrastructure would be necessary and more public space will be available for social activities. In this project strategic, tactical and operational models for (integrated) mobility and logistic concepts will be developed in close collaboration with LCB partners and piloted in practice. Examples are the introduction of combined logistics and mobility hubs at the borders of cities, where Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is combined with the delivery of goods. Parcels can be delivered in locker boxes in these hubs from where they can be collected by people on their way home. They can take the parcels of their neighbors as well (crowdshipping) and drop them off at the correct addresses for discounts on their mobility package. For some parcels delivery bike express services can be organized from the hub to the delivery address and deliveries can also be made directly in the trunk of someone’s car while it is parked at a mobility hub, or when it is at home. This also enables night deliveries, when infrastructure utilization is low. During the PhD several of these concepts (and other new emerging concepts) will be researched in great detail by developing logistic models necessary to operate them into practice.
**Job Description**
You, as a successful applicant, will perform the PhD project outlined above in an international team and in close collaboration with industry. The research will be concluded with a PhD thesis. Contact person is dr. L.P. (Luuk) Veelenturf (
[email protected]). A small teaching load is part of the job.