Our PhD students, our drivers for innovation!

If we have often had the opportunity to recall here the strong dynamics of innovation that reigns at AGILEA (cf. AGIRE joint research lab), we have rarely spoken of those who do. Those who think beyond the current practices and dogmas of our professions.

We want to talk, of course, about our PhD students!

They are the ones who, for three years, study, analyze and question the current uses and tools.

They are the ones who successively;

• identify a problem,
• carry out a state of the art,

and, above all,

• propose,
• develop
• and experiment

new approaches, methods or techniques to solve the problem statement.

They are simply the ones who, through the knowledge they create, allow us to better respond to the new economic and societal challenges we are facing. (VUCA world, hyper-connectivity, sustainable development, etc.)

The story of AGILEA and its PhD students starts in 2013 with the arrival of Romain Miclo. (now in charge of R&D activities for AGILEA)

And it is a thunderous beginning!

Indeed, Romain simply worked on a world first... The first PhD thesis on Demand-Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP).

He thus contributed to scientifically demonstrate the real advantages of this innovative method... Which was still very controversial at that time. But above all, he opened up a huge set of improvement and development perspectives on the subject.

In 2017, Guillaume Martin takes over and focuses on what has become, in the meantime, the Demand-Driven Adaptive Enterprise (DDAE).

More specifically, he focused on the so-called Demand-Driven Sales & Operations Planning (DDS&OP) layer. From then on, the research work is no longer limited to evaluating a potential but to exploiting it to the fullest.

Thus, Guillaume worked on the establishment of very concrete business rules allowing to better control the various parameters of a DDMRP system to get the best out of it.

He also developed experimental software prototypes, since in the process of industrialization. They aim to take advantage of the capabilities offered by Artificial Intelligence and Simulation to better help decision makers in their daily tasks.

2018, things are accelerating with the entry into the circle of our brilliant PhD students Anthony Fouqué. Already a senior consultant and associate of AGILEA.

Anthony opens, with the support of the Occitanie Region, a new area of research at AGILEA. He is interested in the establishment of an expert system, based on Artificial Intelligence algorithms, aimed at facilitating, accelerating and making reliable the industrial diagnosis process.

A few months before its defense… We will tell you more very soon… this exceptional work has already allowed the development of a fully operational software. This software has already been used by several dozens of people. And it has been successfully implemented on several dozens of industrial cases.

From 2019, AGILEA is expanding its team of PhD students by offering to share its expert knowledge of operational problems with PhD students in its network.

Thus, Jean-Baptiste Vidal, professor at the University of Orleans and PhD student at IMT Mines Albi, joins the adventure by studying, with the support of AGILEA teams, the concept of Adaptive Sales & Operations Planning (AS&OP).

The same year, Guillaume Dessèvre, another passionate PhD student at Polytechnique Montreal, joined this extended team in the context of his work. Work on the study of the existing correlation between "delivery lead time" and "capacity". In the context of a DDMRP implementation.

More recently, Romain Ben Taleb, a PhD student at IMT Mines Albi, has been entrusted, at the initiative of AGILEA, an ambitious and disruptive subject... In an economic context strongly challenged by the COVID-19 crisis. It will be nothing less than to design and develop a decision-making tool for the managers of the future.

This tool will allow them to make robust decisions based on a priori evaluations of the economic and operational impacts of the risks and opportunities that each company must have to cope with.

Obviously, the adventure does not end here! Many other passionate, enthusiastic, rigorous and creative PhD students will be brought to support the development of AGILEA in the years to come.

We just would like to take this opportunity to thank them all warmly for the huge work they have already accomplished ! And to encourage them just as warmly for the work still to be done!