Lluís Miquel Plà Aragonès

I am interested in the ‘practical’ optimisation of processes related to agriculture and livestock farming. Operational research is a multidisciplinary discipline that combines mathematics, economics and engineering with the aim of solving real-world problems. Some of the management problems that interest me are sow replacement, the optimal delivery of fattened pigs to the slaughterhouse, and the coordination of the pig supply chain. These problems are often addressed using traditional methods, whereas mathematical models and information technology can be combined to produce better and faster solutions. As a result, herd or farm management becomes more efficient and profitable. My interest extends beyond pig management, as many management problems in agriculture share the same structure. The research area is Operational Research, a branch of Mathematics that studies decision models to solve real-world problems, which in my case are mainly related to pig production. These types of models are relevant to precision livestock farming (PLF) and the processing of data generated by different agricultural devices. The main lines of research in this area would be: 1) Development of decision support systems (DSS), digital twins and IoT platforms. This includes mathematical modelling, simulation and optimisation; and 2) Hybrid optimisation models with AI.