Abstract of the seminar papers

Jos van Deursen (Deputy Chief of Police Gelderland-Midden):  Capacity management when every hour counts ...
E-mail: nt4771@gelderland-midden.politie.nl

The dynamics in the developments of our society set various requirements at different levels in the police organization. At an operational level, the society expects that the police react immediately in case of accidents, incidents, etc. At a more strategic level, the police organization is held responsible for taking pro-active measures to guarantee safety and security in a city or area.
Capacity management enables the police to meet these requirements; it helps to create an organization in which managing expectations, reducing the risk of service discontinuities, and realizing planned targets are key. As a result of capacity management, a balance occurs between labor demand, labor supply, and labor satisfaction. Information planning, transparency, measurement, decision-making, execution, and clear responsibilities are the ingredients of capacity management. Capacity management is linking these ingredients such that planned targets can be met. Because every hour counts ...

Marianne van Genugten (Health economist, Department Health Services Research RIVM):  Pandemic influenza: impact on health care resource use.
E-mail: marianne.van.genugten@rivm.nl

Another influenza pandemic, following the 1918, 1957 and the 1968 pandemics, is likely if not inevitable. In a 'regular' influenza-epidemic 5-20% of the population is to become clinically ill; during a pandemic this percentage can mount to 30 or even 50%. A pandemic could cause substantial social disruption; insofar it would involve a large proportion of the population contracting a serious or less serious form of the illness. In order to minimize the effects on the population of such a potential pandemic the Dutch Ministry on Health has drawn up an influenza pandemic plan to be prepared on coping with large morbidity and health care use. The objective of this study is to calculate the expected number of hospital admissions and mortality in case of pandemic influenza.

Ben Jansen (Director ATOS Beleidsadvies en -onderzoek):  On the complexity of labor capacity management.
E-mail: b.jansen@atos.nl:

Capacity management issues in which the factor labor is playing a dominant role are in the “spot light” of the society, especially given the current economic climate. The complexity of these problems is increasing rapidly, mainly due to the ever-increasing number of site constraints, such as individualization and the balance between work and private life. Due to these “soft” constraints, the role of mathematical models in capacity problems is limited.

Leo Kroon (Logistics consultant, NS Reizigers / Erasmus University):  Capacity management at the Dutch Railways.
E-mail: lg.kroon@reizigers.ns.nl:

The most important resources in a railway system are the infrastructure, the rolling stock, and the train personnel. In the Netherlands, the railway infrastructure is utilized more heavily than in most other countries. Nevertheless, the aim is to come to a utilization that is even higher than currently. NS Reizigers, the main operator of passengers trains in the Netherlands, is currently faced with shortages of the resources rolling stock and train personnel. Several projects are aiming at an improvement of this situation. In this presentation, these aspects will be described in more detail. Also several quantitative models will be presented that can be used for estimating the required and the available capacities of the resources.

Henk Post (Analyst Future Technology bv):  Public transport planning for elderly and handicapped people.
E-mail: henk@ftonline.nl:

In the past 5 years the local governments in the Netherlands make the realization of public transport for elderly and/or handicapped people. Several transportation systems were introduced. All systems had their own rules concerning time-windows, the minimum time a ride has to be ordered in advance, the possibilities of combinations of several rides, the region covered by the system and of course the prices of the tickets for a ride.
Especially the low prices and the large amount of rides during a day (from some hundreds in a small system to several thousands in a large system) made economical combinations necessary. In 1995 the need for a planning tool for the local transportation systems became clear. Since then research is done on this subject. This research leads to the so-called ‘Route Beheers Systeem’ (RBS). RBS can be used to make economical combinations for the local transportation systems.
During the development of RBS several difficulties had to be tackled. First a high quality road map was necessary to calculate very good ride times and distances. The second problem is due to the fact that one can order a ride very short in advance (typical 0, 30 or 60 minutes). The routing algorithm in RBS is very fast, even for a large amount of trips (say 10,000 a day). The third problem was the real time environment RBS has to deal with. What happened if a taxi is delayed (or faster). What to do if a person didn’t show up at the right place? How to deal with special cases, like a broken car? And what’s the correct use of information about traffic congestion?
In this lecture several parts of RBS will be explained, including the main techniques of the algorithms involved. Several practical problems and their solutions will be mentioned.

Maurits van Schuylenburg (Senior Project Manager Corporate Development/Logistics, Gemeentelijk Havenbedrijf Rotterdam): Timing of the second Maasvlakte in the Port of Rotterdam.
E-mail: schuylm@port.rotterdam.nl:

The Port of Rotterdam is running out of space. From the total 5000 hectares port area just a small percentage is still available for new clients. That is why the Rotterdam Municipal Port Management together with the National Government are planning the expansion of the Port with 1000 hectares port area, the Second Maasvlakte. One of the many topics of study concerning the Second Maasvlakte is the timing. When do we have to start with the actual building of this mega project? To answer this question is not very easy, that is why simulation techniques haven been used to give more insight in probable scenario’s and their consequences.

Joost Warners (Head of structure and process optimization group, KPN Valley): Network planning and capacity management in telecommunication.
E-mail: j.p.warners@kpn.com:

KPN owns and operates a large number of networks, both for ‘old world’ services (circuit-switched voice services, such as telephony) and ‘new-world’ services (packet-switched, data/IP services, ‘new voice’). Each of these networks must meet its own service-specific requirements, while in addition a combination of generic objectives must be optimised, such as efficiency with regard to cost, high availability and future proofness. Especially given the current economic situation it is of the utmost importance that KPN can offer its customers high quality services at low cost. In this lecture the approach taken by KPN to solving these issues will be illustrated with several recent practical examples, such as the design of the GPRS network.

Pieter Wartenhorst (Operations research specialist at McKinsey & Company): Aligning the workforce with Human Resources capacity requirements.
E-mail: pieter_wartenhorst@mckinsey.com:

A change in business activities usually causes a change in HR requirements. This may lead to a major mismatch between current workforce and future requirements.
In this presentation we demonstrate a tool that is used to assess the magnitude of change to come, to identify key levers to resolve the mismatch, to facilitate negotiations with the unions, and to support the reconversion of employees in excess by proposing the best options in order to solve as many problems as possible. More specifically the tool is used to:
- Identify the mismatch between current personnel and future requirements (by function, by location),
- Assess which part of the mismatch can be solved by attrition (e.g., pension, pre-pension), and
- See which part of the remaining mismatch can be solved by reconversion (using a Linear Programming optimization model).
The use of the tool is integrated in a comprehensive HR program. It is especially useful in companies with large gaps and excesses (due to e.g., restructuring or merger), many employees, and a large number of similar functions.

Henk van Zuylen (Professor in Dynamic Traffic Management at TU Delft and senior advisor of the Adviesdienst Verkeer en Vervoer of the Ministry of Verkeer en Waterstaat): Capacity management in road transport.
E-mail: h.vanzuylen@citg.tudelft.nl:

In the past decades the policy with respect to road infrastructure in nearly all developed countries has been to slow down the development of new roads and to focus on better utilization of existing infrastructure. The growth of transport demand has been much higher than the increase of road capacity. Better utilization has mitigated the problems but has not solved the congestion. The attempts in the past years to change the behavior of travelers have not been very successful, so that the focus of the present policy is on increasing the utilization and applying road pricing. The optimization of utilization has the negative effect that the elasticity of the road infrastructure has disappeared: small disturbances, e.g. and incident on a road or ordinary road maintenance, have enormous impacts of the performance of the transport system. For the future there is a need for techniques to increase the robustness and reliability of the road infrastructure, even if that will reduce the utilization. If utilization of the existing infrastructure is improved, the net effect will be small, since the additional available capacity will immediately be filled with latent demand.
A lack of knowledge exists on the subject of the optimization of robustness and reliability, since most research is aimed at the improvement of utilization, which gives a conflict with the optimization of reliability. The integration of the control of highways and the secondary road network offers opportunities to realize a more robust road infrastructure.