Maths could help optimise your business and solve some of your organisational issues

The University of Essex would like to invite you to a business breakfast networking event to be held at Firstsite in Colchester, on Friday 14th September 2012.

Date:    Friday, 14^th September 2012

Venue:Firstsite restaurant, Lewis Gardens, High Street, Colchester, CO1 1JH

Time:   7.30am – 9.15am

Academics from our Maths Department are working creatively with external companies in many ways to optimise their business processes.  Whether that’s by examining companies consumption and wastage rates, providing numerical data to improve efficiency, providing better counting techniques, working on areas of project management or undertaking statistical/clustering analysis the application of Maths could greatly enhance  your business.  Currently our Maths Department is finding ways to collaborate with businesses such as, supermarkets, shipping ports, I.T. and energy companies on these issues - could your business benefit also?  Why not come along to our breakfast event to find out more and what interesting research is being delivered from the Maths Department at the University of Essex?

7.30amRegistration and Breakfast        

8.00amIntroduction by Prof David Crawford, Head of Business Partnerships, University of Essex

8.15am Dr Abdel Salhi, Head of Maths, University of Essex

Wealth Creation and Sustainability

Operational Research (OR) is a discipline that allies the mathematical approach to computing to tackle practical problems.   It has its origins, like modern computers, in WWII when efficient use of resources, good planning and quick response to unexpected events were greatly needed.  In my talk I will try to bring OR techniques to the attention of local industrialists, businessmen and the curious who want to know a little more about this modern discipline which has now matured and is commonly deployed. I will use examples from the real world to explain how some of the techniques of OR can be employed to reduce costs, improve profit margins, and how this can be done with sustainability in mind.

8.35am Dr David Penman, Maths Department, University of Essex

Optimisation by combinatorics?

This talk indicates how a whole range of phenomena in real life are related to combinatorics, which is (crudely speaking) the art of counting how many arrangements of things there are under various constraints.   Topics will include the link between your mobile ‘phone and colouring graphs,  using designs to test a batch of items for defective ones, and how probability can be used in certain circumstances to find whether certain kinds of formulae can be satisfied. No detailed mathematical knowledge will be assumed.  

8.50amQuestions and Answers

9.15amClose