Transport research collaboration

Transportation underpins most manufacturing and business activity and the high cost of fuel has added a new imperative to get transport and logistics right.

Monash IT researchers help businesses increase productivity and deliver savings in the transport and logistics sectors through mathematical modelling and software development that companies can adapt for their own purposes.

Professor Mark Wallace and his team from the Faculty of Information Technology have joined forces with a transport logistics company, Constraint Technologies International (CTI) to form a research centre that develops "optimisation software" to help solve the issues with scheduling, rostering, asset utilisation, optimisation and disruption recovery that currently plague the transport industry.

"CTI has both complex problems to solve and a highly qualified and experienced team who understand how to describe these problems to academics. Monash aims to tackle these problems using an interdisciplinary approach, so this relationship will drive our research in directions that are both theoretically challenging and practically useful," said Professor Wallace.

Alan Dormer, General Manager, CTI said the partnership with Monash was productive for both parties.

"I think our collaboration has been very practical. The people on the projects have understood the type of problems that we're trying to solve and I think it has been very easy for us to get results. The company has been very pleased. In fact we've increased our investment several fold since the original project," said Mr Dormer.

 

Improving outcomes in injury prevention, rehabilitation and compensation practice relating to road and workplace accidents is also a high priority for both government and researchers spurring a new partnership between Monash, Worksafe Victoria and the Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) called the Institute for Safety Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR).

Established in April 2009, ISCRR will lead the development of a culture of injury prevention, rehabilitation and compensation research in Victoria.