Koos de Glas winner of MSc Thesis Award FEB

Koos de Glas, MSc student of the Double Degree programme in Technology and Operations Management (with Newcastle University)  and Supply Chain Management has won the annual MSc thesis prize of FEB. The combination of the quality of his thesis and the clearness of his presentation during the ceremony on 1 October, made the jury decide on De Glas as a winner.

Koos de Glas’s prizewinning thesis is titled: ‘Medical Inventory Management in Developing Countries’. His supervisors are N. Dube MSc (FEB) and Dr Y. Yang (Newcastle). The prizewinning ceremony took place on 1 October at the Faculty of Economics and Business, during the Academic Day of the EBF annual conference. The jury consisted of Laura Spierdijk and Onne Janssen of FEB and Evert van Dijk (Dagblad van het Noorden) and the prize is worth € 1000.

Supervisor Nonhanla Dube about the thesis of Koos de Glas: “It brings to light a worrying situation in healthcare facilities in developing countries: excessive waste of medical supplies in well-funded facilities while severe shortages persist in poorly funded ones. Often, they are in close proximity. A common problem shared by these facilities is the challenging context that renders conventional inventory management practices inappropriate or difficult to implement.

Koos' thesis goes a step further and investigates the feasibility of certain measures as means of improving practices to avoid both extremes of shortages and waste. Beyond the relevance of the content, the manner and timeframe in which the student managed to collect relevant data is unprecedented in this field. Seasoned researchers continue to face difficulties in getting the right data from relevant and diverse sources.

Furthermore, the thesis culminated in promising dialogue and collaborations among major stakeholders in the business and not-for-profit sectors to try and improve access to medicines for the poor in developing countries primarily through adapted and more coordinated inventory management practices.

That the research results were taken to heart by practitioners from different sectors and brought them at the table in this manner speaks much more than I can pen in a few hundred words about the relevance of the thesis!”

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