5 August 2026, by Yagmur Gül

Photo: UHH Business School

From left to right: Yagmur Gül, Asra Dia, Prof. Simone Neumann

The team from the Operations and Supply Chain Management research area attended IFORS in Vienna in July—one of the largest international conferences in the field of operations research—to present its research findings and exchange ideas with other researchers.

From July 12–17, our professorships of Sustainable Logistics and Mobility and of Operations Management were represented at the 24th IFORS Triennial Conference in Vienna, one of the largest international conferences in Operations Research, bringing together around 3,000 researchers and practitioners from across the globe under the theme "Decision Support for a Sustainable World."

The team from the focus point Operations & Supply Chain Management made the most of six packed days: Prof. Simone Neumann chaired a conference session, while Yağmur Gül, Asra Dia, and Lina Schmidt each presented their current research to an international audience on "Order Retrieval in a Compact Storage System with Side Access", "Expected Retrieval Time in Compact Storage Systems with Side Access" and "Traveling Salesman Problems with Stochastic Demand: Optimizing Arrival Time Commitments in Ridepooling Services", respectively. Julian Golak also joined the team in Vienna.

With its broad program, the conference offered a great overview of current trends in the OR community. The growing intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research was a recurring theme across many sessions. Our team also attended sessions on topics ranging from fairness in distribution problems and decomposition methods to the latest developments in storage systems, each offering fresh perspectives and new impulses for our own research.

But just as valuable were the moments in between: inspiring conversations over coffee, thought-provoking sessions, and wonderful new connections with researchers from across Europe and beyond.