TU researcher develops innovative logistics software

Over the past two and a half years, Dr.-Ing. Stefan Frank, a research associate at the Institute of Aviation and Logistics, has developed new software for optimizing logistics processes, which will be used by a large company in the future. Dr. Frank wrote the software in his spare time, in addition to his actual work at the TU Dresden: "After I had worked out the basics over several years, a quarter of a year of pure research followed and then a good six months of development up to a very first prototype. After that, it took me another half a year to be able to map a concrete problem."

The software frosy is a special software for logistics processes that can be used wherever activities are assigned to resources or vice versa. The product is intended for the general problem of the resource-saving use of limited resources and offers, among other things, the possibility of optimizing delivery processes in logistics and thus saving resources and time. "My idea was to bring together established methods of mathematical optimization with new approaches from the field of artificial intelligence and to test this on given problems. Since I was involved in a logistics project, it made sense to test this directly for a specific task," explains Dr. Frank. In contrast to recognized standard software, which can be applied to a very broad spectrum, frosy is a targeted approach to resource planning. Through this specialization more potentials can be skimmed off. The software can be used in a variety of ways: "This can be general hourly and spatial planning, aircraft handling, railway traffic or the occupancy of operating theatres. It is a matter of assigning processes or the associated individual activities to resources and mapping the dependencies in the logistics systems under consideration," says the developer.

A license agreement has already been concluded between the TU Dresden and an internationally operating group for the new software. The license negotiations, which were conducted by the Transfer Office of the TU Dresden, started in October 2018. The license agreement was signed on December 12, 2018. "With the license agreement, we were able to achieve the highest exploitation proceeds at the TU Dresden 2018 and at the same time the largest licensing of a software", emphasizes Sebastian Flößel, Head of the Transfer Office.

On 17 January 2019, at a ceremonial reception, the prorector for university development, Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Antonio Hurtado, the outstanding work of Dr. Frank and stressed the importance of good cooperation between the various players at the TU Dresden in order to be able to carry out successful projects. Dr. Frank continues to see his future at the TU Dresden: "The interaction with the TU Dresden and the Transfer Office went very well. There is an intensive support and a constant exchange. It is a very extensive project, but the motivation and commitment are very high on both sides. In the future, I would like to continue to deal with mathematical methods in combination with new approaches from the field of artificial intelligence and hope that my further scientific qualification can take place under the supervision of Prof. Nachtigall(Professor of Traffic Flow Science)."