IELM Newsletter, Issue No. 23

Abstract

IELM newsletter THE HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUE No.23 DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT Message from The Department Head As the new department head, this is my first opportunity to send a message to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the extended IELM family. As an active and dynamic discipline of advanced scientific management, my vision is to make IELM a world recognized department where people excel at solving important societal problems that range from the design and management of logistic functions and supply chains, to the design and pricing of products and services, to detailed management of complex manufacturing operations. My goal is to make IELM a place where students can acquire core competencies in modeling, simulation, optimization, and data analytics, as well as domain specific knowledge in areas ranging from logistics management to health care analytics, from e-commerce to ergonomics, and from revenue management to financial engineering. Armed with these competencies and knowledge, our graduates will become proficient problem solvers that add great value to the companies they form or work for. If you are a current IELM student, I encourage you to take your courses seriously so that you can sharpen your talents and skills and bring them to market. I also urge you to network with other students, faculty and alumni to further your vision into the future. If you are a Professor at IELM, I entreat you to teach with passion and to work hard at creating new knowledge through your research. If you are a staff member, please keep the best interests of students foremost in your mind. If you belong to the IELM alumni, please come and join our events, stay in touch with the department, volunteer to mentor our students, and help them and other alumni in their career paths. If we work together we can create a virtuous cycle that attracts top students and world class faculty, where students develop into successful individuals and faculty are committed to teaching and research. Sincerely Professor Guillermo Gallego Crown Worldwide Professor of Engineering and Head of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management Faculty News 2 Professor Guillermo Gallego moved to Hong Kong in January 2016 as Head of the Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management (IELM) Department and the Crown Worldwide Professor of Engineering at HKUST. Prior to his appointment, Professor Gallego was the Liu Family Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, where he served as Department Chair from 2002-2008. He was named an MSOM Fellow in 2013, INFORMS Fellow in 2012 and has been the recipient of many awards including the INFORMS Revenue Management Section Prize (2005), the Revenue Management Historical Prize (2011) and the Revenue Management Practice Prize (2012). Professor Gallego’s research interests include dynamic pricing and revenue optimization, supply chain management, e-commerce, and inventory theory. He has published influential papers in leading relevant journals where he has also occupied a variety of editorial positions. His work has been supported by numerous industrial and government grants. In addition to theoretical research, Professor Gallego has developed strong collaboration with global corporations - he is a consultant for Sabre Airline Solutions and for Walt Disney World, and has worked extensively with Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lucent Technologies, and Nomis Solutions. Professor Gallego’s distinguished academic and research achievements were recently recognized by HKUST. At the Third Inauguration Ceremony of Named Professorships, held on March 9 2016 in the Lo Ka Chung IAS Building, Professor Gallego was officially appointed as the Crown Worldwide Professor of Engineering. This professorship was the result of generous sponsorship by The Crown Worldwide Group, a Hong Kong-based logistics company. New Direction for the IELM Department The Named Professorship Program was officially launched in 2013, with beneficial support of donors. A Named Professorship is a significant recognition bestowed upon eminent academics at the University, with the objective to uphold the University's remarkable tradition of academic and research excellence by attracting the best scholars in the region and from around the globe, and to retain outstanding academicians at the University. When focusing on his short and long term aims at HKUST, Professor Gallego noted that one goal is to transform and restructure the department so that it achieves status as one of the top 10 IELM departments in the world. For undergraduate education, he aims to invigorate the academic program to have a stronger core and to allow students more flexibility to specialize in a variety of domain specific topics. As for postgraduate studies, he plans to develop graduate programs in financial engineering and supply chain management with a strong data analytics component. Regarding research, he would foster collaboration with companies in Hong Kong, Mainland China and other parts of Asia, which will make the department’s research even more relevant, as well as providing students with more opportunities. Professor Gallego received both his PhD degree (1988) and MS degree (1987) in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. Awards & Honors 3 Professor Jin Qi has been appointed as Assistant Professor to IELM Department from Fall Term 2015. Prior to this position, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, after receiving her PhD from The NUS Business School at The National University of Singapore in 2014. Her broad range of research includes robust optimization, healthcare operations and transportation. She has collaborated with several hospitals in Singapore and Hong Kong, and she is now working with Queen Elizabeth Hospital on the capacity design in Ambulatory Care Centers. Professor Qi is teaching IELM 3901 on Transportation Systems in Spring Term 2016. Prof Jin Qi Joins IELM Department Professor Xiangtong Qi, Professor of IELM, received an Honorable Mention for the IIE Transactions 2015 Design and Manufacturing Paper Award with “Coordinated price quotation and production scheduling for uncertain order inquiries”. The paper was co-written with Liang Lu and Zhixin Liu and was published in IIE Transactions (Volume 45) in 2013. On a further occasion, Professor Qi was successful in winning the First Class Award of the 14th China Society of Logistics Best Paper Award together with IELM PhD Alumni Mingzhu Yu (2012) in November 2015. They received this notable honor for their paper “A vehicle routing problem with multiple overlapped batches”, which was published in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review (Volume 61) in 2014. Prof Xiangtong Qi: Prestigious Awards for 2 papers CHAN Pak Long Parry, a Year 4 IEEM student, was awarded the Professor Edmond Ko Scholarship for Student Mentoring 2015/2016. As a student admitted after graduating from a sub-degree program, Parry identified that there was currently insufficient support from the Department for this particular group of students. As a practical and caring person, he took the initiative to provide assistance to these newly admitted students by sharing his experiences with them and offering useful advice specifically on credit transfer issues. He went further by organizing an in depth campus tour for them so they could familiarize themselves with HKUST and its layout before the start of the semester. Because of his compassion and dedication to student-to-student mentoring activities, Parry was selected for this scholarship. The Scholarship Presentation Ceremony was held on November 25 2015 at the G/F Chinese Restaurant at HKUST. As the selected representative of all those who had been awarded a scholarship, Parry gave a short and insightful talk on his mentoring experiences and what he had gained from these. The Professor Edmond Ko Scholarships for Student Mentoring were set up in 2012/13 in memory of the late Professor Edmond Ko, an educator who devoted his energies and enthusiasm to the enhancement of student learning. It aims to promote participation in and to honor contribution to student-to-student mentoring at the University. IELM Student awarded the Professor Edmond Ko Scholarships for Student Mentoring Awards & Honors 4 A team of 6 IELM undergraduate students, CHUNG Sze Yin, HO Yiu Wang, LAI Alpha, LI Ming Ho, LO Ching Man and YU Chun Sing won the Champion at the HKIE-MI Young Engineers Programme (YEP) 2014/15. Jointly organized by the Manufacturing and Industrial Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE-MI) and the HKIE Young Members Committee, this program aims to broaden the horizon of participants as well as to promote the Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering (MIE) profession to young individuals. With the theme of “Inspire the Young in MIE”, participants were required to attend a series of technical visits. They then had to give a 15 minute presentation to share their experiences and through these, how they would inspire future students to join this innovative program. Champion at the HKIE Young Engineers Programme ZHANG Jiangang Calvin (Supervisor: Professor Richard So), a second year IELM MPhil student in the Technology, Leadership and Entrepreneurship (TLE) program, together with his team, won the 1st runner-up in the annual HKUST 2015 MBA Business Plan Competition with a business plan that focused on the area of smart hearing aids. The team was awarded a total of USD 18,000.00 to further develop their ideas and concepts and put these forward for a global business plan competition (e.g. Rice Business plan competition). The IELM/TLE program is set up to help students to initiate innovation and to become entrepreneurs by starting their own companies with high-end technologies. Students are encouraged to be agents of change as part of the development of an innovative educational culture and entrepreneurship ecosystems at HKUST, as well as accelerating knowledge transfer which will make positive changes to society. For more details of this program, please visit http://tle.seng.ust.hk. Second Prize in the HKUST MBA Business Plan Competition We are excited to announce that four IELM final year undergraduate students, CHAN Yin Cheung, LAI Kok Ho, TSANG Mei Yuk and TSUI Ka Lok won the Champion prize at the HKSQ Company Based Student Project Competition 2016, held on March 12 2016 at the City University of Hong Kong. Organized by the Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ), this competition offers an exciting opportunity for students to gain practical problem solving experience through working and participating in an actual industry based case. Sponsored by LSG Sky Chefs, students had to collaborate and put forward a number of practical solutions in connection with improving the internal delivery process at LSG. During the LSG Sky Chefs Plant Visit, IELM students identified 2 major problems within the existing system. With the aim of reducing manpower required for the delivery process, the team put forward the suggestion of developing a new information system and an automated railway system that would reduce the actual manpower process by up to 50%. Triumph at the HKSQ Student Project Competition 2016 Events 5 Over 100 IELM faculty members, staff, fellow alumni and current students congregated in the Chinese Restaurant at HKUST on February 27 2016. A warm and lively atmosphere as well as the prospect of catching up with friends ensured that the IELM Alumni Dinner cum Annual Gala 2016 was an exciting and meaningful occasion. This year, we were pleased to invite Professor Siu-Wing Cheng, Associate Dean of Engineering to address the dinner together with Professor Guillermo Gallego, Department Head of IELM. IELM Alumni Get Together! The night was packed with great highlights: group photo taking at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Atrium, imaginative and lyrical saxophone and piano performances by gifted current IELM students, and last but not the least, a lucky draw session with gifts sponsored by GP Electronics (HK) Limited and given out by our professors. It was an enjoyable and memorable evening for all alumni, professors and staff to catch up with each other as it has been quite a while since they last saw one another. It was also an excellent occasion for students to network with our alumni, mentors and industry experts so that they could gain first-hand knowledge of actual work experiences. HKUST hosted the 25th Anniversary Distinguished Speakers Series on December 7 2015, featuring Mr. Pinky Lai, Founder and Design Director of Brainchild Design Group and Brainchild Design Consultants, and former Chief Designer of Porsche 996 series, including the 911, Cayman and Boxster. IELM was a co-organizer of the meeting with Mr. Lai. Prior to the Distinguished Speakers Series talk, students and faculty members had the rare opportunity into the future of the automotive design industry; Mr. Lai was also able to share his own personal experiences in pursuing his professional goals and how students should pursue their dreams. Distinguished Speakers Series: Mr Pinky Lai’s innovative Porsche We are pleased to announce that IELM is the winning designs! office of the Fall semester 2015 SENG Interdepartmental Paper Reduction Challenge organized by the Sustainability Unit, HKUST. This Challenge aims to encourage the reduction of paper consumption within all departments to save printing costs as well as reducing environmental impact. As the winning office, IELM department has achieved reducing paper use by an astonishing 59%. Professor Fugee Tsung, former Department Head of IELM said, 'This is a very meaningful event and the result is encouraging. We support the school to go paperless to save paper which comes from trees. We will continue our efforts in reducing paper use and together we can build a greener campus and a more sustainable world.' “Green” Department in SENG - Fall 2015 Events 6 The Science Toy Design Competition provides a platform for HKUST students to showcase their creative talents in transferring the knowledge of science and technology to an educational toy. With the generous and continuous sponsorship from NSI International Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of educational toys in the USA, the second competition of its kind was concluded with a Final Presentation and Award Ceremony on November 11 2015. The competition kicked off with an Opening Ceremony cum Info Session on April 23 2015. Shortly after the submission deadline, the judging panel, consisting of 11 design professionals including Professor Ravindra Goonetilleke, Mr. Brian Waldman, Senior Vice President of NSI International lnc., Mr. Farra Chan, Director of NSI International Inc. and Mr. David Chu, President of Tai Nam Industrial Company Ltd., selected ten finalists from a pool of extremely high quality entries. A subsidy was then provided to finalists to turn their abstract idea into a physical prototype. The judging panel awarded the Gold Award to DU Xiaohan (BEng in Mechanical Engineering & BBA) and QI Jie (BSc in Physics) for their toy Educational Toys: exciting designs for the future! Paper Robot, while CHEUNG Hiu Ling (BSc in Environmental Science), LEUNG Chui Ting (BEng in Civil Engineering) & MOK Lai Ying (BEng in IEEM), and SHETH Luv Kalpesh (BEng in Mechanical Engineering) were the Silver and Bronze Award winners with their toys The Weather Master and Color Mixer respectively. An Honorable Mention was presented to the toy Treasure Hunter, which was designed by FU Xiaojin (IELM PhD student), WEI Yue (IELM PhD student in Bioengineering Program), WANG Yucheng & XU Jiaxin (from China Academy of Art in Hangzhou). This annual competition has been a great success in promoting innovative and creative education toy designs around the campus; NSI have benefited by garnering fresh ideas for future products in a highly competitive market and also keeping focus on what is popular with today’s young people. More information on this competition is available on http://design.ust.hk/competition/sciencetoy. Guest Lecture by Mr. Andy Tung, CEO of OOCL on “Introduction to Container Shipping and Logistics” Site Visit to Hongkong International Terminals (HIT) 2016 Feb 23 Mar 14 7 IELM 2410 students studying Logistics and Freight Transportation Operations have been fortunate enough to get some real exposure to Hong Kong’s logistics industry. The course instructor of IELM 2410, Professor Chung-Yee Lee, Cheong Ying Chan Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of IELM Students’ Exposure to Hong Kong’s Logistics Industry Department, arranged a series of interesting guest lectures and firm visits for his students. Students were delighted to network and gain new insight from industry leaders present at the talks, as well as gain a deeper understanding of the operations of the containers and cargo terminals through various firm visits. Professor Fugee Tsung, Professor of IELM was invited by Center for Education Innovation, HKUST to share his experiences with blended learning at the “University E-Learning Forum - How to kick start a blended learning course” on October 23 2015. In the seminar, Professor Tsung shared his vision of flipped teaching and illustrated the role of teachers as mentor, coach and educator. He walked participants through his experience in facilitating in-class group works, and how to balance of in-class learning and after-class learning in his first-time-offered blended learning course IELM 3270 on Quality Engineering. In addition, he also showcased some of the benefits and challenges he has observed in his teaching. Blended Learning - new trend of teaching and learning Since the Spring semester 2015, IELM Department has offered 2 blended learning courses: IELM 2510 Engineering Probability and Statistics by Professor Jiheng Zhang, Associate Professor of IELM and IELM 3270 Quality Engineering by Professor Fugee Tsung. Different from the traditional teaching method, a blended-learning approach is a mix of face-to-face teaching and self-study online courseware with the aim of enhancing students to engage in the learning process and increase the value of face-to-face teaching. Basic concepts are taught through online video lectures, while the traditional classroom time focuses on highly interactive sessions where students can apply what they have learnt online to group activity sessions. This new teaching method has been well received by students, and is sure highlight an exciting new trend at HKUST. Guest Lecture by Dr. Kelvin Leung, CEO of DHL Asia Pacific on “Logistics Management - Key to Success” Site visit to Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (HACTL) Apr 5 Apr 6 Stay Connected! Has your contact information changed? Do you have any recent news that you would like to be included in our next newsletter? Send us your information by the following means: Email: ieug@ust.hk Mail: IELM Newsletter Editor Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong Research Have you ever thought of having a mini air-conditioner in your shoes to keep your feet cool and dry all day? Professor Neville Lee, Adjunct Associate Professor of IELM Department and 3 IELM alumni (Albert Chan, Jacky Chow, Kevin Lam) have invented the “Super Air Cooled Shoes” - with the incredible Aersoothe air-cooling technology that reduces humidity while providing an innovative cooling system for the feet. Kemfert “Super Air Cooled Shoes” come with a revolutionary patented technology that can circulate 100 cans of air in just 10 to 15 minutes of walking. With the bending-actuated pumping system at the bottom of the shoes, this incredible technology can offer up to 50X more air flow by pumping the heat and water vapor out of your shoes, at the same time preserving regular walking comfort and stability. In this way, this can help alleviate many of the humidity or heat related foot ailments such as sweaty feet and athlete’s foot. Kemfert “Super Air Cooled Shoes” - A breakthrough design This innovative product was first on displayed at the InnoCarnival 2015. Organized by the Innovation and Technology Commission, the 9-day exhibition was held at the Hong Kong Science Park during October 31 - November 8 2015, attracting thousands of visitors. This awesome footwear was also appeared in various public media and social media. This super breathable and very comfortable footwear is now on display at THE BASE, the student entrepreneur lounge at HKUST. Visit The BASE or the website of Kemfert “Super Air Cooled Shoes” at http://kemfert.com to find out more! (From left to right) Jacky Chow, Samuel Hui, Prof. Neville Lee, Kevin Lam, Albert Chan Prof. Lee and his team were invited for various media interview