The students Pieter Beeckman and Kenny Vanleeuwen have received the ArcelorMittal prize for the best thesis during the graduation ceremony for the Commercial Engineers (Handelsingenieurs) on 21/09/2013. The thesis was supervised by Prof. dr. Mario Vanhoucke from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration from the Ghent University.
In their thesis "An accuracy study and improvement of a time-dependent EV model using Monte Carlo simulation", Pieter and Kenny have analyzed the work written in a paper by Warburton who has proposed a time-dependent Earned Value model to control projects in progress. This paper is published in the International Journal of Project Management, Dec 2011, Volume: 29 Issue: 8 pp.1082-1090. When we first saw this publication, we noticed that the interesting concepts were analyzed on only 1 single software project, which means that no general conclusions could be drawn. However, with our tool P2 Engine and our academic spirit that we share with the students, Pieter and Kenny were able to test this novel technique on thousands and thousands of projects, and hence, they presented more general results under a wide and diverse set of project settings. We are obviously proud! Proud for the work of the two enthusiastic and hard working students. Proud that P2 Engine was used as the research tool to analyze the topic. Proud on our Commercial Engineering program and the young graduates it delivers to the world.
This topic is certainly relevant for the academic world and the practical world, and we hope that Pieter and Kenny will be able to present their work on EVM Europe 2013. For those who still hesitate to come to our EVM Europe conference next December, there are now no more excuses... just be there and join us!
Every year, ArcelorMittal gives this prize to the best thesis at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administation. It is not the first time that this prize goes to a student who uses an Operations Research methodology to solve a problem in a Master thesis. Last year, the award went to one of our team members Louis-Philippe Kerkhove, and this year "Operations Research and Project Management" rules again. Thank you Pieter and Kenny! Thank you Mathieu for helping the students! Thank you P2 Engine for running so amazingly fast. Thank you OR-AS for developing P2 Engine. And last but not least... thank you ArcelorMittal for believing in what we do!
And, by the way, Commercial Engineering students do pretty well. There's another prize to give, as shown in the Dexia Asset Management award blog.