This year, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) is organising the mathematical workshop for solving business and industry challenges for the third time. Although the format of applying mathematics to solve industry challenges is known around the world, the workshop organised by KTU is unique in the Baltic States.
Mathematical methods can offer solutions to various challenges in different fields of business and industry. Global companies, such as Philips, Orange, ING, different banks and other organisations turn to mathematicians in order to improve their processes, procedures and products.
“This workshop is, in a way, a good opportunity for academics to challenge themselves and to find possible solutions to industry and business problems”, says Dr Daniel Howard, the representative of Howard Science Limited, who participated in the mathematical workshop organised by KTU in 2018.
Among the companies who presented challenges for KTU mathematicians, last year was UADBB, AON Baltic, Finpass, DPD, SBA, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. Also, a number of foreign companies and universities – Oxford (UK), Belarussian State, Mashhad Ferdowsi (Iran), Oldenburg (Germany) – took part in the event.
During the workshop, solutions for the companies working in the fields of energy, production, electronics, environmental protection, finance, medicine were created.
Several mathematical models for big vehicle fleet insurance and contingency prediction were created for AON Baltic, the global provider of risk management, saving and health insurance professional services. Solving the challenge of SBA company group, the mathematicians were aiming to shorten the furniture production cycle by 10 per cent. This would allow to save working time and automatize production.
Also, during the workshop mathematical model allowing to improve predictions of the clients’ solvency was created for Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB Vilnius headquarters and a FinTech startup Finpass was recommended to use the algorithm, based on big data principles and allowing to evaluate sustainable income of mortgage applicants according to the recommendations of the Bank of Lithuania.
Dr Howard of Howard Science Limited believes that the solutions offered can open unexpected possibilities and avenues of thinking.
“The mathematicians used RStudio package, and this was the first time I heard about the software. Another discovery was to understand that some of the challenges were related to an immense amount of data. I have been working with data collection for many years, but I didn’t realise that the amount can be so enormous. I am talking about hundreds of millions of lines. I understood that people who are buying software may need the possibility to enter the millions of lines of data, and procedures, which would allow processing this data”, says Dr Howard.
KTU Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences is a member of The European Consortium of Mathematics in Industry since 2016. Since 2017, the Workshops organised at KTU are included into COST activity Mathematics for Industry Network, MI-NET.
The third workshop of Mathematical Solutions for Business and Industry will take place on June 10–14, 2019. For more information, please visit: https://mathworkshop.ktu.edu/
