Pick-up Prediction Model for De Rooy Transport
Student: Dominik Szewczyk
In academic year 2024/2025, our third-year student Dominik Szewczyk did his internship at De Rooy Transport. During his internship, Dominik worked on improving the logistics planning by predicting unexpected pickup locations. These are pickups that are not included in the daily plan and often cause last-minute changes. He found that over 82% of pickups were unplanned, creating major inefficiencies. To solve this, he built a prediction tool that helps planners prepare better routes. Thanks to his solution, the company can reduce unnecessary driving by up to 1,500 kilometers per day!
What Dominik liked most about his internship was that he was working on a real problem that had a direct impact on the company.
“I wasn’t just doing research, I was building a solution that addressed an actual challenge in logistics. It felt great to see my app being used in a real use case, knowing that it could really make a difference. That feeling of creating something useful was the most rewarding part for me.”
Dominik said that the biggest learning experience from his internship was learning how to break down a complex problem into smaller, manageable tasks.
“I had to predict pickup occurrence, size, number of shipping units, exact location, and insertion time. Trying to handle all of this with one model felt almost impossible at one point. Splitting the task into five separate machine learning models, each focused on one aspect, and connecting them in a pipeline led to great results.”
On the question how ADS&AI helped him prepare for his internship, Dominik answered:
“ADS&AI helped me develop strong problem-solving skills. It taught me how to analyze challenges step by step and gave me the confidence that I can learn whatever I need. It also changed the way I approach problems; now I focus on understanding the core issues first and then finding practical ways to solve them. That’s exactly what I needed to create a successful project during my internship.”
Dominik found his internship through a meeting organized by the Logistics Community Brabant. Lastly, he wants to give a tip to all other students that are looking for an intership:
“My tip is to choose your domain carefully, try to work in a field you’re interested in. As a data scientist, you’ll need to understand the problem really well, so it helps if you actually care about the topic. Also, take a good look at the tasks before accepting the internship. Make sure it’s something you actually want to work on, otherwise you might end up doing research or data analysis for six months (unless that’s your thing, then go for it!).”
About De Rooy Transport
De Rooy Transport is a logistics company specialized in pallet distribution across the Benelux. They focus on collecting one or several pallets one day and delivering them anywhere in the Netherlands or Belgium the next, even within 24 hours, including to inner cities. In addition to speed and reliability, De Rooy is strongly committed to sustainability, continuously working to reduce its environmental impact. Their approach combines efficiency with environmentally conscious logistics.