Nicole Berx

Cost and Value Analytics, Models & Optimization (CVAMO) is a research lab that groups 10 professors and about 30 pre- or postdoctoral researchers form different departments linked to the degree in Business Engineering at the faculty of Economics and Business Administration (Ghent University). Our experts have a profound knowledge and insights in business and economics understanding engineering challenges. There are two main activities:

• Extraction and development of executable models incl. cost estimation for TCO elements of complex and dynamic environments, supported by mining techniques, data analytics and AI/machine learning capturing human system interaction/decision making.

• Robust cost-optimal decision making (stochastic optimisation) for manufacturing, intralogistics, supply chains and planning/scheduling under uncertainty. Develop and apply machine learning techniques and semantics to include expert knowledge to obtain interpretable outputs.

CVAMO is a core lab in the Strategic Research Center Flanders Make (www.flandersmake.be), that groups research labs from all Flemish universities. Based on high-tech research, Flanders Make offers active support to companies in the manufacturing industry to develop and optimize products and production processes.

Furthermore, CVAMO is also part of Machineries & Factories (M&F). M&F is an industrial research platform grouping the activities of about 125 researchers from different research groups from several faculties at Ghent University and Howest. The M&F research activities add value in smart motion products and smart production systems in an industry 4.0 environment driven by digitalization and digital twin technology. Next to this, M&F is a member of ai.ugent.be and contributes to the Flanders AI Research program.