Master in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Companies can propose business problems as a foundation for student thesis work. Thesis projects that are undertaken by students are completed on the campus of the University of Luxembourg within a nine-month window. Each project is executed by a small team of students (typically 2) in collaboration with the industry partner and guided by a professor. Students will have regular meetings at the sponsor companies to discuss scoping, progress and results. These meetings expose them to corporate and business life in the region (and sometimes beyond) and build their professional network.

Students make final presentations of their work on the project and submit a written thesis. Participating LCL partners are able to hear about thesis projects being done with other partner companies, giving them broad exposure to current issues in logistics and supply chain management.

The thesis, the presentation, and other materials are available to help partners communicate the students’ findings within their organisations. On both sides, it is a great opportunity to learn, grow… and produce results!

Master thesis projects can revolve around a wide variety of topics including

• Redesign of operational processes and assessment of as-is operations
• Creation of advanced forecasting modules with analytics and data science
• Optimization of supply chain decisions such as inventory, routing and production.

Customer profitability analysis in transportation networks

A freight carrier provides capital-intensive capacity which is to be filled by shipments. Perishable capacity availability, high capital costs and low marginal costs for adding a new shipment make the allocation of this constrained capacity an important lever of success. This project provides a holistic evaluation of customer profitability by combining logistics and game theoretical models.

Reduction of CO2 emissions in supply chain networks by optimisation

Transportation contributes around 27% of CO2 emissions in Europe. In an effort to reduce these emissions, this project optimises distribution of goods in a global supply chain while explicitly penalising the emission of CO2. Analysis shows that the carbon footprint of the supply chain can be reduced by 9% even when profitability is affected by less than 0.14%.

Customer-support pricing model

Traditional customer-support models are being challenged by emerging innovations and new technologies. Yet, several industries still rely heavily on classic third party call centres. The project seeks to break the mold by developing contracts that incentivise the third party call centres to embrace innovation while promoting alternative solutions such as freelancing customer support.

Predictive model for truck availability

Considering the increasingly competitive nature of industries today, early knowledge on expected truck availability is crucial for companies to ensure delivery service level at a reasonable cost. The goal of the thesis was to develop a prediction model for transport price for the French market and to highlight the power of the approach. The knowledge on the identified features for sound predictions provides a competitive advantage to the sponsor company when integrated into the mid-term decision making.