GENIOS Recognized at CNA Innovation Prize 2024
At an awards ceremony on 21 November 2024 in Nuremberg, MENTZ received a Finalist Award by the Bavarian Minister of Transport.
Every year, the CNA (a Nuremburg-based think tank for innovation in transport and logistics) awards an “Innovation Prize” to companies, organizations, start-ups, universities, colleges, or other research institutions for exceptionally innovative products or services. MENTZ was nominated directly for the award in 2024 after applying for the first time. “Unfortunately, we were not among the top three, but we are pleased that our work has been recognized. We received a certificate for being a finalist,” said Simon Freitag, a MENTZ representative who attended the ceremony.
Dr. Markus-Ludwig Wermer, a Head of Development at MENTZ, described the award-winning software which he helped create, “Our GENIOS software is fully-automated and optimizes duty and vehicle schedules, and supports personnel assignment and fleet deployment. The latter includes e-vehicles and alternative drives. Depending on parameterization, GENIOS helps achieve a balance between costs, the best use of fleet resources, and employee satisfaction.”
White Box Approach for Full Transparency
What makes GENIOS special is its white box approach: users always have full control over how they want to optimize. “This is a particular strength of our software because other optimizers commonly employ black-box thinking,” indicated Wermer, who completed a doctorate in mathematics.
MENTZ’s GENIOS optimization can cover all requirements that can be mathematically formulated. “The result is a planning option that was created based on individual requirements formulated through valuations, adaptations, and selections. A planning option can be a vehicle schedule, a duty schedule, or a roster, an assignment plan for personnel, or a deployment plan for vehicles. The optimization core works directly on user-specified valuations, which can be displayed as separate indicators or KPIs,” explained Wermer. Each KPI can be assigned a cost factor to define the valuation function and thus bring control over how one wants to optimize.
“The potential applications of our GENIOS software are not only limited to public transport: The “genetic” approach we developed at MENTZ is a leap in intelligent evolution to meet the latest requirements in transport and logistics, process optimization, and many other challenges in which different parameters can be repeatedly combined and variously weighted,” commented Wermer.
Learn more about GENIOS : https://en.mentz.net/solutions/optimization/