The students conduct research projects at different companies in the Netherlands from December 2024 to May 2025. The IRP allows the companies to benefit from the expertise of the master’s students in ‘Innovation Management’, ‘Operations Management & Logistics, ‘Data Science and Artificial Intelligence’, and ‘Data Science in Business & Entrepreneurship’.
The theme of this year is “The impact of automation on strategic decision-making”.
Strategic decision-making is crucial for every company to flourish in terms of adapting to global trends and configuring complex coordination that is required in the global economy. Hence, there is great emphasis in today’s world that is put on strategic decision-making not only in academia but also in the sectors. Strategic decision-making also refers to business process improvements as well which can be translated into optimization in, for example, production scheduling. Japan, followed by Taiwan, is a pioneer in Kaizen and Six Sigma methodologies. Hence, this theme not only aligns with the destination but also has the potential to provide insights that can be translated into the individual who joined the trip. Automation is currently a form of technology that is quite accessible and growing rapidly. There are currently quite a lot of conversations going on around automation and how it will be transforming industries and companies. Some people are excited about it, some people are still sceptical. However, certainly, automation is here to stay. Thus, the board of 2025 of IRP came to a consensus regarding the impact of automation in the strategic decision-making in various industries and sectors falling under the scope of Industrial Engineering related domains.
For any questions, please send an e-mail to contracting.irp@industria.tue.nl.
