­Award for the Dissertation of Benedikt Zipfel on the Faculty Day

We are very pleased that Benedikt Zipfel was awarded the Dr. Feldbausch Prize on Faculty Day, June 17, for his dissertation on “Integrated Production Planning for Additive Manufacturing.”

With this prize, the Faculty of Business and Economics awards outstanding dissertations in its research fields. In his dissertation, Benedikt Zipfel focuses on integrated production planning in additive manufacturing. The work centers on a class of planning problems in which two closely interrelated subproblems must be solved simultaneously: the assignment of components to production batches and their optimal placement on the build platform (packing problem), as well as the sequencing of these batches on the available 3D printers (scheduling problem). In contrast to existing approaches, which treat both decision problems separately, this work consistently models specific characteristics of industrial 3D printing processes—such as higher-dimensional packing constraints and machine-specific process time calculations—within an integrated planning framework.

The results of his research have been published in several renowned journals, including the European Journal of Operational Research (VHB Rating: A). This combination of methodological novelty and practical relevance underscores the merit of Benedikt Zipfel and his dissertation in receiving the Dr. Feldbausch Fellowship.