LG CNS and Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers Host 'Optimization Grand Challenge 2024'

LG CNS employees are introducing the 'Optimization Grand Challenge 2024' competition.
[Photo by LG CNS]

LG CNS announced on the 7th that it will hold the 'Optimization Grand Challenge 2024' in collaboration with the Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers.

LG CNS launched this competition to nurture outstanding talent in the field of mathematical optimization and to expand social interest. Mathematical optimization refers to the technology that calculates all possible cases with the currently available resources and conditions to find the optimal alternative that yields maximum efficiency.

The theme of the Optimization Grand Challenge 2024 is "Bundle Delivery Optimization: Bundle it, Send it Cheaply and Quickly." Bundle delivery means that a delivery driver handles two or more orders at once. Participants in the competition will compete by creating their own algorithms that assign food orders to delivery drivers and set the most efficient bundle delivery routes for each driver.

Applicants who wish to participate in the competition can submit their application forms through the competition website from today until the 21st of next month. International students residing in Korea are also eligible to participate.

Participants need to develop and submit algorithms that can solve the bundle delivery problem. They can upload their developed algorithms once a day. Scores and rankings for the submitted algorithms can be checked daily at noon through the leaderboard published on the competition website.

Evaluation is based on an assessment model pre-implemented by LG CNS optimization experts and advisory professors of the competition operation committee. Participants will continuously refine their algorithms and compete based on leaderboard scores and rankings during the competition.

The competition proceeds in three stages: preliminary, semifinals, and finals. The preliminary round runs until early August, and the top 20 to 30 teams on the leaderboard, which is published at noon the day after the deadline, advance to the semifinals. Then, in the semifinals held in September, 10 teams are selected based on leaderboard scores to advance to the finals. The finals take place in October. Finalists will present their implemented algorithms at the Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers’ autumn academic conference in October. The final winning team is determined by combining the leaderboard score on the final day with the presentation score.

The total prize money for the competition is 30 million KRW. LG CNS will award 10 million KRW to the grand prize winner and 5 million KRW to the excellence award winner among the 10 finalist teams, and will also provide prizes to participants in the semifinals and preliminaries. LG CNS will grant document screening exemptions for job applications to the top 4 teams in the final rankings.

Meanwhile, LG CNS is continuously nurturing and discovering optimization experts through industry-academia cooperation. Last month, it signed an agreement with Yonsei University to establish the ‘Intelligent Data & Optimization’ department, a recruitment-linked contract department. The ‘Intelligent Data & Optimization’ department, offered by LG CNS at Yonsei University Graduate School, aims to train data analysts and optimization experts. Master’s degree students are guaranteed employment at LG CNS after graduation.

Jang Min-yong, Senior Vice President of LG CNS D&A Division, said, "We hope this competition will serve as a catalyst for revitalizing the optimization industry," and emphasized, "LG CNS will continue to lead 'customer value innovation' based on accumulated optimization and data analysis capabilities."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.