JNU foreign expert promotes global artificial manufacturing
Date: April 17, 2020
Source: Zhuhai Campus  Author: Xia Shaoyun  Photos: Zhang Liang, Yang Songping
Prof. Matthias Thürer of JNU's School of Intelligent Systems Science and Engineering won the Guangdong Science and Technology Cooperation Award in 2019. As a German, he has long concentrated on and supported the Belt and Road Initiative. As a production-management expert, he helps many Guangdong enterprises with their development problems and acts as a go-between in global academic communication and cooperation. As a professor, he has put down roots at JNU, committing to scientific research and instruction to push research assistance and educational cooperation between China and foreign countries.
 

(Prof. Matthias Thürer)
Specializing in production management,  Thürer mainly researches production planning and control, as well as lean operation design in the intelligent manufacturing environment. He joined JNU full time in 2014 as a professor, doctoral supervisor and honorary director of the Industrial Engineering Teaching and Research Section in the School of Intelligent Systems Science and Engineering.
In six years, Thürer has published over 50 high-level academic papers with JNU as his communication unit, all reported in top journals in his field. He has presided over and participated in three National Natural Science Foundation of China projects; undertaken two cooperative research projects between Guangdong and Hong Kong; published two English monographs, in which he creatively proposed the comprehensive application of card control methods and systems; and in 2016 won the Shingo Publication Award, a prominent honor in production.
 

(Prof. Thürer's monograph Card-Based Control System for a Lean Work Design won the Shingo Publication Award and was successively translated into German, Portuguese, Chinese and other languages. The Chinese version was published by China Machine Press.)

In 2017, Thürer was invited to cooperate with Carpoly Chemical Group Co., Ltd., the largest private pain manufacturer in China, to provided feasible suggestions for enterprises to solve the problems of raw material backlogs and load imbalances in the manufacturing process.

The next year, he was invited to take charge of a project to diagnose the production and stock situation of Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd., and produced a number of practical results.
 

(Thürer with his partners)
For undergraduates, he has offered courses including Application of Production Load Control, Modeling and Simulation and System Optimization and Simulation Experiment. For graduate students, he set up courses in Management Science and Engineering Theory and Method and Control Theory and Simulation.”
 

(Prof. Thürer giving a lesson)
To date, Thürer has cultivated more than 20 master's and Ph.D. students through independent training and joint training with other supervisors from JNU and internationally renowned universities. He has recommended six graduate students from the University of Dortmund in Germany, the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for study in China. He has also guided seven young scholars from JNU, Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany and Belgrade University in Serbia in improving their research abilities, providing impetus for the academic exchanges between young scholars in China and abroad while building a bridge for Sino-foreign educational cooperation.

In July 2015, Thürer was appointed as JNU's doctoral supervisor in management science and engineering. Three months later, he became the first foreign teacher selected as a distinguished professor of Zhuhai Scholars. In September 2017, he was selected as a distinguished professor of the Pearl River Scholars. In April 2019, he was awarded the high-level talents card of Guangdong.