Nikki Leijnse, student Industrial Engineering & Management (IEM), has earned the second prize in the SLF Graduation Competition. The SLF Graduation Award was handed out for the thirteenth time during the Service Leadership Summit (SLF) on 19 November and is meant for Bachelor's and Master's students graduating in the field of service logistics. The award encourages SLF service logistics talents to improve the sector through innovative and practically applicable methods.
Pitches in the finals
A jury of professionals assesses the level and applicability of the research prior to the Service Logistics Summit and nominates the entrants for a plenary pitch. Nikki made it through to the finals, in which she had to go up against Joep Hoedemakers, a student of Eindhoven University of Technology. In the finals, she was defeated by Joep, but nevertheless she delivered a fantastic piece of work and came out on top as a finalist. Seven theses competed this year. So reaching the finals and finishing second is a great achievement. Nikki went home proudly after winning a silver medal with inscription and a € 500,00 cash prize.
Unexpected phone call
Nikki's supervisor, Matthieu van der Heijden, had already approached Nikki back in July asking her to submit her thesis for nomination. She didn't hear anything of it for quite some time, until one week prior to the finals she received a phone call informing her that she had been nominated for the finals. Nikki was pleasantly surprised and did not expect it at all. "At that moment I already felt like a winner. Of course it would have been even nicer to win first place, but I am really proud of this achievement".
Research on order fulfillment of spare parts during the end-of-life phase
The subject of Nikki's thesis is "order fulfillment of spare parts during the end-of-life phase". The end-of-life phase is the phase in which there is still demand for spare parts, but the manufacturer no longer produces such parts. Nikki: "During my research, I examined the different ways in which companies can meet the demand for spare parts in this end-of-life phase. I have learned these methods from literature, but also from practice, by conducting interviews with different companies for benchmark purposes. In the end, I used this information to draw up a mathematical model to determine which (combination of) method(s) was best on the basis of the KPIs customer service level and total costs for the company I carried out this assignment for."
And on to the next thesis...
Nikki will not be idle after winning this award. " Currently, I am busy with my second thesis for my Master's in Applied Mathematics. I'm nearly halfway there and in the meantime I'm considering what kind of job I would like to do next".
