Experts & Expertise

• Operations research
• Optimisation
• Simulation
• Systeemontwerp
• Transport

1988- now: Several courses in the area of industrial engineering, consultancy skills, commercial skills, information technology, management skills, coaching and contracting.
1991: APICS (American Production and Inventory Control Society) certificate at fellow level (CFPIM)
1984 - 1988: Ph.D. Dissertation on vehicle routing: "A Computational Study of the Set Partitioning Approach for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems", Twente University, Enschede, The Netherlands
1983 - 1984: Master Applied Mathematics, specialization Information
Science, Twente University, Enschede, The Netherlands
1978 - 1984: Mechanical Engineering, specialization applied Operations Research, Twente University, Enschede, The Netherlands (cum laude)

2005 - present: Director of my own consultancy company "OR Coach" which assists organizations in translating business questions to proper quantitative models and techniques.
2000 - present: Professor in applying Operations Research, Tilburg University, The Netherlands (0.4FTE chair)
2000 - 2005: Director CentER Applied Research and section manager of the Operations Research section at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. CentER Applied Research is the contract research institute of the Economic Faculty of Tilburg University.
1999 - 2000: Commercial director of Paragon Decision Technology B.V., Haarlem
(developers of the AIMMS modelling system)
1995 - 1999: Partner and member of the management team of CQM, manager of the Optimisation group (10-15 consultants)
1988 - 1994: Senior consultant Operations Research at the Centre for Quantitative Methods (CQM B.V.), Eindhoven, The Netherlands
CQM is a highly innovative and well-known quantitative methods consultancy in the Netherlands. It originates from Philips N.V.
1984 - 1988: Ph.D. Researcher at Twente University, Enschede, The Netherlands, in combination with a small educational task
1983 - 1984: Combined Masters' thesis in Operations Research and Information
Science at the Royal Dutch/Shell Laboratories Amsterdam

In my professional career I worked in very many projects, most of the time at the edge of Operations Research and Information Science. Below is a brief summary, grouped by category.

Simulation projects
Simulation is often used to investigate the dynamic behaviour of complex systems. In these systems many unexpected events take place. Projects I've been involved in were in the semi-conductor industry and the components industry (especially the set up of a large flat-panel display plant).

Production planning projects
Operations Research techniques are very useful in difficult planning situations. I was involved in several operational planning projects. Examples are the planning of glass plant, a multi-echelon assembly chain for car stereo and in the capacity allocation of a furnace group in the semi-conductor industry.

Strategic supply chain projects
As consultant and researcher I worked many times in the quantification and optimisation of supply chains. Often the purpose is to minimise cost in combination with some service criteria. As examples can be mentioned: the strategic distribution infrastructure for consumer goods in Europe, the development of a strategic distribution system for PC's towards Europe, investigation of the factory gate pricing consequences in the retail industry in the Netherlands and the development of a new concept for express parcel delivery for a large European express service provider.

Operational distribution projects
Operational distribution concerns the short term planning and scheduling of the distribution of vehicles with the purpose to minimize cost while delivering/collecting all the freight/services. I worked at several planning-concepts, algorithms and decision support systems for organizations. In this way I assisted the operational planning of a large German express service provider, on an operational planning module of the standard vehicle routing package RitPlan, on routing problems of several smaller companies and for the operational planning and scheduling of a large European express service provider.

Logistic and distribution scans
In 1996 I've been certified by the Dutch government as "Transactie" consultant. The purpose of the Transactie consultant was to determine in very short time the savings- and emission reduction potential of transportation and/or shipper companies. I have done several scan in the years thereafter. Besides I've worked at strength/weakness analysis of logistic parts of high-tech companies. Important here is to motivate management to implement the proposed changes.

Health care
In recent years I've also worked in a project in the health care sector, especially in the logistics of patients. This project concerned a so-called CVA (brain attack)-chain in which patients during the process of curing are confronted with transmural care. The purpose of the project was to reduce the number of "wrong" bed days.

• Book review editor of the European Journal of Operations Research (EJOR) from 1995 -1999.
• From 1998-2002 member of the VVS-jury for the best yearly Dutch masters? thesis in the area of OR & statistics.
• From 2002-2005 president of the Dutch OR Society (NGB).
• In 2004 president of a large international conference on Operations Research (500 attendants), organized together with the German OR Society in Tilburg.
• From 2006 until now editor of OR Spectrum, a scientific journal on the application of Operations Research
• From January 2007 sponsored chair by TNT-Express (0.2FTE)

Supervisor of 4 finished Ph.D.'s

• Ieke le Blanc on Closing Loops in Supply Chain Management: Designing Reverse Supply Chains for End-of-Life Vehicles (15th March 2006)
• Maaike le Blanc - van Krieken on Solving Set Partitioning Problems using Lagrangian Relaxation (15th March 2006)
• Johannes Blomeyer (Lufthansa) on air cargo revenue management (24th November 2006)
• Frans Cruijssen on horizontal cooperation in Transport & Logistics (cum laude) (1st Dec 2006)

Supervisor of Ph.D. currently running:

• Ineke Meuffels (ORTEC) on strategic time-definite network design

Chairman Organizing Committee of OR 2004 at Tilburg University. A conference of 3 days with 450 participants.

H.A. (Hein) Fleuren teaches the following subjects:

• Supply Chain Collaboration and Advanced Planning (325063) Further information

2000 - : Coordination contract research (via CentER AR)

2001 - 2005: Chairman of the Dutch OR Society

2005 - : Working as an independent OR consultant under the name OR Coach.

Most important client: TNT-Express (also sponsor of chair)

2005 - : Working with TIAS in developing programmes (Ops. Excellence and the

Global Optimization Academy)