FOR devising a template that could help address common manufacturing problems, a faculty member of the Technological Institute of the Philippines was awarded first place at a doctoral dissertation competition held in Sydney, Australia.

The winning paper submitted by Engr. Ma. Teodora Gutierrez, an assistant professor of TIP’s Industrial Engineering department, was titled “A Model for Production Possibility Frontier of an Enterprise Using Multi-Objective Optimization Approach.”

It topped the doctoral dissertation category and edged out eight other research projects presented at the First Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Conference in Sydney, Australia held on December 20 to 22, 2022.

Gutierrez said her goal was to help her case study, a steel company based in the Philippines, find optimum solutions that would somehow make it easier for operations managers to minimize production costs and wastes.

“I came up with this study to formulate a model for this particular company using their data and solve (a problem) using the operation research technique. So, this one is more complex because there are tradeoffs,” she said.

Gutierrez’s win at the Australian conference of the IEOM Society is her first international recognition.

IEOM Society is a non-profit global organization “dedicated to the advancement of industrial engineering and operations management discipline for the betterment of humanity.”

Gutierrez has done research on improving productivity in a semiconductor subcontracting company and worked with other researchers on a solution to decongest the Manila Port using model simulation, among other studies.