Ph.D. student
Researcher
Grupo de Sistemas de Optimización Aplicada (SOA)
Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (ITI)

	Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) Camino de Vera, s/n, Edif. 8G - Acc. B, 46022, Valencia, Spain
	+34 96 387 99 52
	+34 96 387 72 39

Kostanca Katragjini was born in Tirana, Albania, in 1977. She received the M.S. degree in computer engineering (summa cum laude) from Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy, in 2004. In 2010 she received another M.S degree in Business management from Universidad de Valencia, (Spain). Currently she is a PhD student at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain).

Kostanca counts with more than 7 years of work experience in industrial optimization issues. From September 2003 until September 2008 she worked as process optimization engineer at Pfizer Manufacturing Plant, in Latina, Italy. The most important experiences in Pfizer were

1. Implementation of a software system for production operations scheduling. This scheduling system optimizes production order sequencing in order to meet production requirements, improve resource utilization, reduce lead times and stay in step when plan changes occur. The system offers solutions for creating constraint-based scheduling that optimizes plant-level production plans and continuously synchronizes them with changing supply and demand factors (release times, due dates). The project was developed in collaboration with the University of Roma Tre (prof. Carlo Meloni, Dario Pacciarelli, Marco Pranzo).


2. Member of a Six Sigma Black Belt project for the improvement of the plant automatic pallet transportation system. (AGV, traslo-elevators, conveyers) The project scope was the improvement of the system capability focusing in particular on transportation time variability reduction. The Six Sigma techniques (Cause and Effects diagrams, Control Charts, Pareto Charts, Hypothesis testing, Regression, Multivar Analysis, Gauge R&R etc.) articulated in the five DMAIC phases, (DEFINE, MISURE, ANALYZE, IMPROVE, CONTROL) resulted powerful in diagnosing and eliminating most of the Common Cause variations. The result was a process able to consistently meet the specifications.


3. Implementation of the SCADA system in Proficy HMI/SCADA iFIX for the Plant Film Coating Machine.


4. Design of a Model of Project Management, in cooperation with University "UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA TorVergata", in order to align Pfizer best practises, techniques and skills with the latest methodologies carried out by Project Management Theories.


5. Budget Control of all the projects of the two Pfizer Italian plants of Latina and Pisticci. Actuals, Forecasts and Budget variance analyses for the periodically plant budget.

From October 2008 to date Kostanca is working at Instituto Tecnológico de Informática, in Valencia (Spain). She is leading a new software development, RoutingMaps, and doing scientific research activities in Advanced Vehicle Routing Problems inside a PhD programme.