This Special Section of the ANZIAM Journal (Electronic Supplement) contains the refereed papers from the 2015 Mathematics for Industry NZ Study Group (MINZ 2015) held at Massey University, New Zealand from 29 June--3 July, 2015. The MINZ is a special interest meeting of ANZIAM, the Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics division of the Australian Mathematics Society. MINZ was formed to provide a national entity to host workshops where companies pitch their problems to New Zealand’s mathematical scientists. They then work collaboratively to generate practical solutions through modelling, statistical analysis or computation.

Six challenges were presented from diverse industries, with more than 100 delegates participating.

All published papers were written by the problem moderators in consultation with the company representatives. The manuscripts were submitted to the editors, Professor Emeritus Graeme Wake and Professor Tony Roberts, and were subsequently refereed by two expert referees. On the advice of the referees manuscripts were accepted for publication, subject to the recommended revisions, and formally approved by the editorial committee.

• Director: Professor Emeritus Graeme Wake
• Deputy Directors: Dr Luke Fullard, A/Prof Winston Sweatman, and Dr Boris Baeumer
• Administrative Officer: Dr Seumas McCroskery, KiwiNet Innovation Network

Two invited speakers presented at the conference:

• Get off the grass
  Professor Shaun Hendy, University of Auckland
• Industrial Mathematics: the answer to a dilemma between academia and industry
  Dr Maria Bruna, University of Oxford, UK.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the immense work provided by the Challenge moderation teams. Their contributions have allowed for the reports in this booklet, along side the industry representatives who articulated the challenges in such a way to allow immediate deliberation. We thank those that worked tirelessly behind the scenes to allow for a smooth running event. Last but not least we thank everyone who came to MINZ and contributed your time and effort, to make such an event successful. If you have not watched it, then please have a look at our Youtube video: it gives a nice overview of MINZ's success.

Industry challenges

Click on "Summaries" to download the booklet of equation free summaries.

Fisher and Paykel

Can a solution be found to obtain accurate end point to eliminate false cut offs caused by bunched cloths for a new clothes dryer product in development?

Fonterra

Can we estimate the impact of various factors on the amount of foreign objects removed by the current processes in a moving stream of milk powder?

Eyedentify

NZ retailers lose over $2M per day from retail theft. The challenge is embodied in the question: Who is most likely to offend in my store now?

Compac sorting

The challenge is to create a calibration transform that will convert the output of different spectroscopic systems to a standardized form.

Livestock improvement Corporation

Extracting data out of milk-generating greater value from herd test data.

Transpower

What are the causes of time error creeping positive while operating in frequency keeping control mode? and how might the time error creep be mitigated?