Air cargo logistics: designing a forwarder's shipment plan model and issues.

Wong Wai Hung.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-103).Abstracts in English and Chinese.LIST OF TABLES --- p.iiiLIST OF FIGURES --- p.vABSTRACT --- p.viiChapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Goals and Significance --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- Thesis Organization --- p.2Chapter Chapter 2. --- Review on Air Cargo Industry --- p.3Chapter 2.1 --- The Position of Air Cargo Logistics --- p.3Chapter 2.2 --- General Air Cargo Practice --- p.3Chapter 2.3 --- Hong Kong Air Cargo Practice - An Example --- p.1Chapter Chapter 3. --- Air Cargo Cost Analysis --- p.12Chapter 3.1 --- Shipping Costs --- p.12Chapter 3.1.1 --- International Shipping Costs --- p.12Chapter 3.1.2 --- Local Shipping Costs --- p.14Chapter 3.2 --- Shipment Categorization --- p.15Chapter 3.2.1 --- Illustrative Examples - Hong Kong --- p.18Chapter 3.3 --- Analysis of shipping cost --- p.27Chapter 3.4. --- Freight Forwarders' means for freight forwarders' success --- p.29Chapter 3.4.1 --- Consolidation --- p.31Chapter 3.4.2 --- Integration --- p.42Chapter 3.4.3 --- Cooperation among freight forwarders to combine the cargos --- p.44Chapter 3.5 --- Summary --- p.44Chapter Chapter 4. --- A Mixed 0-1 LP Model of Air Cargo Logistics integration & consolidation --- p.47Chapter 4.1 --- Statement of the Problem --- p.47Chapter 4.2 --- Literature Review --- p.49Chapter 4.3 --- Objective Function --- p.51Chapter 4.4 --- Logical Constraints --- p.52Chapter 4.5 --- Resources Constraints --- p.54Chapter 4.6 --- The Model --- p.55Chapter 4.7 --- Properties of the Model --- p.56Chapter Chapter 5. --- Solution Process --- p.58Chapter 5.1 --- Tabu Search --- p.59Chapter 5.2 --- Tabu Search Algorithm --- p.62Chapter 5.3 --- Illustrative Example --- p.64Chapter 5.4 --- Implementation and Results --- p.70Chapter Chapter 6. --- Extensions --- p.73Chapter 6.1 --- Different approaches as the initial solution --- p.73Chapter 6.2 --- Risk or Reliability Limit --- p.75Chapter 6.3 --- Consolidation with inventory penalty --- p.78Chapter 6.4 --- Two Phase Method --- p.79Chapter Chapter 7. --- Sensitivity Analysis --- p.81Chapter 7.1 --- Delivery time --- p.81Chapter 7.2 --- Charging price and cost --- p.85Chapter 7.3 --- Resources allocations --- p.92Chapter 7.4 --- A series of good solutions --- p.95Chapter Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.98Chapter 8.1 --- Future Work --- p.98Chapter 8.2 --- Future Research --- p.100LIST OF REFERENCES --- p.102Appendix --- p.104Simulation results --- p.104Pseudo code --- p.107Program Coding --- p.11

Cargo/Logistics Airlift System Study (CLASS), Volume 2

Air containerization is discussed in terms of lower freight rates, size and pallet limitations, refrigeration, backhaul of empties, and ownership. It is concluded that there is a need for an advance air cargo system as indicated by the industry/transportation case studies, and a stimulation of the air cargo would result in freight rate reductions

Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (2/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 2 of

Optimal consolidation of air freight for an international cargo carrier

Air cargo carriers consolidate the freight in order to avoid extra handling e ort and holding cost during transfers among the international hubs. We consider planning problems associated with the consolidation process of an international air cargo carrier. At the operational level of planning, the cargo carrier is concerned with optimal consolidation decisions given the locations and capacities of gateways with consolidation capability along with the ight network information. An optimal consolidation maximizes the savings due to transfer and transport of freight in a consolidated manner. We develop a set covering type linear programming problem formulation for this consolidation and routing problem; we also propose a column generation method to solve large-scale instances. At the tactical level, we study the expansion of gateway capacities keeping the gateway network and ight network as it is. The problem formulation is extended to cope with capacity expansion decisions and the solution method is enhanced appropriately. At the strategical level, we consider decisions associated with selecting new locations for gateways. In order to solve this problem, the column generation method is employed as a subroutine in a heuristic algorithm. For our computational experiments, we use real-life data set from a European-based international air cargo carrier

Monitoring air cargo shipments: a framework for detecting potential delays and prescribing corrective measures.

Wan, Yulai.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-44).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgement --- p.iiiChapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.6Chapter Chapter 3 --- Framework --- p.10Chapter Chapter 4 --- The Simulation Model --- p.13Chapter Chapter 5 --- Phase 1: Detect Potential Delay --- p.15Chapter 5.1 --- The delay indicator --- p.15Chapter 5.2 --- Setting tolerance level --- p.20Chapter Chapter 6 --- Phase 2: Prescribe Corrective Measures --- p.22Chapter 6.1 --- Corrective measures --- p.22Chapter 6.2 --- Criteria of selecting measures --- p.24Chapter Chapter 7 --- Phase 3: Validate Corrective Measures --- p.30Chapter Chapter 8 --- Managerial Insights --- p.34Chapter 8.1 --- "Improvement potential, tolerance level and lateness of correction" --- p.34Chapter 8.2 --- Taking corrective measure before consolidation is helpful --- p.36Chapter 8.3 --- Reducing activity duration is a better way to lower activity criticality --- p.37Chapter Chapter 9 --- Conclusion and Future Research --- p.40References --- p.42Appendix: Program code for the simulation model --- p.4

Optimal Shipping Decisions in an Airfreight Forwarding Network

This thesis explores three consolidation problems derived from the daily operations of major international airfreight forwarders. First, we study the freight forwarder's unsplittable shipment planning problem in an airfreight forwarding network where a set of cargo shipments have to be transported to given destinations. We provide mixed integer programming formulations that use piecewise-linear cargo rates and account for volume and weight constraints, flight departure/arrival times, as well as shipment-ready times. After exploring the solution of such models using CPLEX, we devise two solution methodologies to handle large problem sizes. The first is based on Lagrangian relaxation, where the problems decompose into a set of knapsack problems and a set of network flow problems. The second is a local branching heuristic that combines branching ideas and local search. The two approaches show promising results in providing good quality heuristic solutions within reasonable computational times, for difficult and large shipment consolidation problems. Second, we further explore the freight forwarder's shipment planning problem with a different type of discount structure - the system-wide discount. The forwarder's cost associated with one flight depends not only on the quantity of freight assigned to that flight, but also on the total freight assigned to other flights operated by the same carrier. We propose a multi-commodity flow formulation that takes shipment volume and over-declaration into account, and solve it through a Lagrangian relaxation approach. We also model the "double-discount" scheme that incorporates both the common flight-leg discount (the one used in the unsplittable shipment problem) and the system-wide discount offered by cargo airlines. Finally, we focus on palletized loading using unit loading devices (ULDs) with pivots, which is different from what we assumed in the previous two research problems. In the international air cargo business, shipments are usually consolidated into containers; those are the ULDs. A ULD is charged depending on whether the total weight exceeds a certain threshold, called the pivot weight. Shipments are charged the under-pivot rate up to the pivot weight. Additional weight is charged at the over-pivot rate. This scheme is adopted for safety reasons to avoid the ULD overloading. We propose three solution methodologies for the air-cargo consolidation problem under the pivot-weight (ACPW), namely: an exact solution approach based on branch-and-price, a best fit decreasing loading heuristic, and an extended local branching. We found superior computational performance with a combination of the multi-level variables and a relaxation-induced neighborhood search for local branching

Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (3/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 3 of

Integrated service selection, pricing and fullfillment planning for express parcel carriers - Enriching service network design with customer choice and endogenous delivery time restrictions

Express parcel carriers offer a wide range of guaranteed delivery times in order to separate customers who value quick delivery from those that are less time but more price sensitive. Such segmentation, however, adds a whole new layer of complexity to the task of optimizing the logistics operations. While many sophisticated models have been developed to assist network planners in minimizing costs, few approaches account for the interplay between service pricing, customer decisions and the associated restrictions in the distribution process. This paper attempts to fill this research gap by introducing a heuristic solution approach that simultaneously determines the ideal set of services, the associated pricing and the fulfillment plan in order to maximize profit. By integrating revenue management techniques into vehicle routing and eet planning, we derive a new type of formulation called service selection, pricing and fulfillment problem (SSPFP). It combines a multi-product pricing problem with a cycle-based service network design formulation. In order derive good-quality solutions for realistically-sized instances we use an asynchronous parallel genetic algorithm and follow the intuition that small changes to prices and customer assignments cause minor changes in the distribution process. We thus base every new solution on the most similar already evaluated fulfillment plan. This adapted initial solution is then iteratively improved by a newly-developed route-pattern exchange heuristic. The performance of the developed algorithm is demonstrated on a number of randomly created test instances and is compared to the solutions of a commercial MIP-solver.Series: Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Transportwirtschaft und Logistik - Supply Chain Managemen