Innovation Fund Denmark’s Industrial Researcher Prize is awarded to Alexandria Trattner, who in her industrial PhD thesis has developed tools for the Rockwool Group, helping them to halve their number of products and thus increase revenues.
The more different products you have on the shelves, the higher the costs. This applies in particular to industrial companies where production lines need to be converted each time a new product is manufactured.
Using a new analysis tool, Alexandria Trattner helped the Rockwool Group halve the number of products manufactured by ensuring that the products offered are only those providing value to customers and to the company.
“Alexandria has developed analysis tools that can quantify each product by showing net sales, gross profit, and gross profit per production hour. These figures have formed the basis for deciding which Rockwool products should be continued and which should be phased out,” says Lars Hvam, Professor at DTU Management and project supervisor.
Overall, fewer products also result in fewer production shifts, and the company has therefore been able to increase its production capacity. For a company with billions in revenue, this translates into a significant bottom-line figure.
Inspiration for other companies
Alexandria, now employed by the Rockwool Group, is honoured to receive the prize from Innovation Fund Denmark and greatly appreciates the strong support she has received throughout the process.
“I couldn’t have succeeded without the massive support from the Rockwool management and the resources that were dedicated to carrying out the operational tasks in connection with my research,” she says.
Management support and resources are essential if other companies want to engage in this type of analyses. But with those factors in place, Alexandria believes that her research results could also be implemented within other medium-sized and large industrial companies.
“Naturally, the economic and operational gains will not be the same everywhere, but I think that e.g. manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, food, beverages, and enzymes might benefit from the methods,” she says.
Professor Lars Hvam of DTU Management is also proud of Alexandria receiving the prize. He explains that Alexandria has developed innovative methods and models.
“Rockwool were the first to use them, so we’re talking about new knowledge in this area,” he says.
He is also convinced that other industrial companies will be able to use the methods and the learning that resulted from the thesis—with relevant adaptation to the individual company, of course.
With Alexandria Trattner’s 2020 prize, this is the third consecutive year that a researcher from the Operations Management department at DTU Management has been awarded the Industrial Researcher Prize.
In 2019, it was awarded to Martina Fischetti, who in her industrial PhD thesis had developed mathematical models for the design of offshore wind farms for the company Vattenfall. Read more in DTU researcher receives 2019 industrial researcher prize
In 2018, recipient Sara Shafiee had developed a ground-breaking IT solution for optimizing the interrelationship between companies’ production, development, and sales. The results were created in collaboration with Haldor Topsøe, which has already realized significant gains—including in the form of a shorter and more customer-specific sales process.