Curriculum vitae

Ricardo Caballero studied Industrial Engineering at the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá and subsequently completed the M.Sc. programme Management and Engineering in Production Systems at RWTH Aachen University. His master’s thesis at RWTH Aachen University’s Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) focused on knowledge management in small and medium-sized enterprises in the toolmaking industry.

From 2018 until early 2024, he worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering of the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá. He taught production management, production planning and control, operations research, work science and ergonomics, statistics, and applied simulation. He also supervised numerous bachelor’s theses on digitalisation, process optimisation, maintenance, and logistics. From 2022 to 2024, he assumed additional leadership and coordination responsibilities as Academic Coordinator of the Faculty at the Chiriquí Campus.

He has been involved with AFS Intercultural Programs Panama since 2006 and served as Deputy Chair of the organisation from 2019 to 2024. His responsibilities included intercultural education, supporting international participants, and coordinating volunteer programmes.

Since June 2024, he has been a Research Associate in the System Design and Planning department within BIBA’s Intelligent Production and Logistics Systems division. His work combines research, project management, university teaching, and the supervision of academic theses with the design, planning, and data-driven optimisation of production and logistics systems.

Research interest

• AI-based decision support in production and logistics

• Predictive maintenance and machine condition monitoring and prediction

• Simulation, digital twins, and data analytics for production and logistics systems

Activities

• Participation in the Brazilian-German Collaborative Research Initiative on Smart Connected Manufacturing (CRI-SCMfg) and in international research cooperation with universities and industry partners.

• Design and development of AI-based systems for production planning and control and integrated production and maintenance planning

• Analysis and specification of requirements for production and logistics systems and their translation into data, simulation, and decision models

• Preparation and analysis of production, machine-condition, and logistics data, including the design and evaluation of simulation-based experiments

Projects

Prophecy
Prognostic Model Selection for Predictive Maintenance and an Integrated Reinforcement Learning-based Production Scheduling in Dynamic Manufacturing Systems
01.02.2025 - 31.01.2027

AutoLog
Development of autonomous driving processes and dynamic storage and logistics concepts on automotive terminals
01.01.2024 - 31.12.2026