With a background in Mathematics and a passion for logistics, I started working as a Business Consultant for ORTEC. One of my tasks is to prepare and give demonstrations of our optimization software to potential customers. Giving such demonstrations brings all aspects of ORTEC together: understanding the prospect’s processes (Business), explaining how our software works (IT) and showing the possibilities of optimizing the available resources using our automatic planning functionalities (OR). I would therefore like to take you to a day where I gave such a demonstration.
I am in Denmark at a company that produces and transports biogas. The company collects manure from cow and pig farms, produces the biogas in one of their plants and brings back the treated biomass to the farm. The business is quite new and the company is growing fast planning to open another two plants on top of the current three plants.
In one hour, I give an overview of the functionalities within our route optimization product. We have uploaded customer specific data and settings so that the company can relate to the story. Specifically for this business, strict hygiene and disease regulations make the planning process complex. Our planning software can take such restrictions into account as constraints.
I present a specific scenario where one of the farms is closed due to cow illness and a violation pops up when the planner tries to send a truck to this farm. It makes the prospect smile: “That’s exactly how we work!”. Finally, I show a full optimization run and even explain the basics of heuristics and operations research.
This example shows what I like about my job. I work in an environment full of inspiring, talented and motivated colleagues, that challenge me to take initiative and be creative. ORTEC gives me interesting challenges and responsibilities so that I can quickly develop myself. In the end, it feels good to help a customer by making their processes more efficient and sustainable!