Disruptions in Supply Chain Transportation: A literature review

Efficient and well-organised transportation is crucial to the success of any supply chain operation, but disruptions can occur in competitive and globalised environments, leading to potential damage and interruptions. A thorough literature review on supply chain transportation research is conducted to address these disruptions from a transportation perspective. The objective is to present recent research on various aspects of the transportation problems, address the gap considering disruptions and propose a framework that outlines the factors that may cause transportation disruptions, their relationships, the types of impacts they have, and how they depend on one another

A Multi-Criteria Vertical Coordination Framework for a Reliable Aid Distribution

Purpose: This study proposes a methodology that translates multiple humanitarian supply chain stakeholders’ preferences from qualitative to quantitative values, enabling these preferences to be integrated into optimization models to ensure their balanced and simultaneous implementation during the decision-making process. Design/methodology/approach: An extensive literature review is used to justify the importance of developing a strategy that minimizes the impact of a lack of coordination on humanitarian logistics decisions. A methodology for a multi-criteria framework is presented that allows humanitarian stakeholders’ interests to be integrated into the humanitarian decisionmaking process. Findings: The findings suggest that integrating stakeholders’ interests into the humanitarian decision-making process will improve its reliability. Research limitations/implications: To further validate the weights of each stakeholder’s interests obtained from the literature review requires interviews with the corresponding organizations. However, the literature review supports the statements in this paper. Practical implications: The cost of a lack of coordination between stakeholders in humanitarian logistics has been increasing during the last decade. These coordination costs can be minimized if humanitarian logistics’ decision-makers measure and simultaneously consider multiple stakeholders’ preferences. Social implications: When stakeholders’ goals are aligned, the humanitarian logistics response becomes more efficient, increasing the quality of delivered aid and providing timely assistance to the affected population in order to minimize their suffering. Originality/value: This study provides a methodology that translates humanitarian supply chain stakeholders’ interests into quantitative values, enabling them to be integrated into mathematical models to ensure relief distribution based on the stakeholders’ preferences.Peer Reviewe

Relief distribution networks : a systematic review

In the last 20 years, Emergency Management has received increasing attention from the scientific community. Meanwhile, the study of relief distribution networks has become one of the most popular topics within the Emergency Management field. In fact, the number and variety of contributions devoted to the design or the management of relief distribution networks has exploded in the recent years, motivating the need for a structured and systematic analysis of the works on this specific topic. To this end, this paper presents a systematic review of contributions on relief distribution networks in response to disasters. Through a systematic and scientific methodology, it gathers and consolidates the published research works in a transparent and objective way. It pursues three goals. First, to conduct an up-to-date survey of the research in relief distribution networks focusing on the logistics aspects of the problem, which despite the number of previous reviews has been overlooked in the past. Second, to highlight the trends and the most promising challenges in the modeling and resolution approaches and, finally, to identify future research perspectives that need to be explored

An exact solution approach for multi-objective location-transportation problem for disaster response

This paper considers a three-objective location–transportation problem for disaster response. The location problem aims at determining the number, the position and the mission of required humanitarian aid distribution centers (HADC) within the disaster region. The transportation problem deals with the distribution of aid from HADCs to demand points. Three conflicting objectives are considered. The first objective minimizes the total transportation duration of needed products from the distribution centers to the demand points. The second objective minimizes the number of agents (first-aiders) needed to open and operate the selected distribution centers. The third objective minimizes the non-covered demand for all demand points within the affected area. We propose an epsilon-constraint method for this problem and prove that it generates the exact Pareto front. The proposed algorithm can be applied to any three-objective optimization problem provided that the problem involves at least two integer and conflicting objectives. The results obtained in our experimental study show that the computing time required by the pr oposed method may be large for some instances. A heuristic version of our algorithm yielded, however, good approximation of the Pareto front in relatively short computing times.Keywords: Emergency response; Location–transportation problems; Multi-objective combinatorial optimization; Exact method; Epsilon-constraint method

Planification de la distribution en contextes de déploiement d'urgence et de logistique hospitalière

L’optimisation de la distribution est une préoccupation centrale dans l’amélioration de la performance des systèmes industriels et des entreprises de services. Avec les avancées technologiques et l’évolution du monde des affaires, de nouveaux domaines d’application posent des défis aux gestionnaires. Évidemment, ces problèmes de distribution deviennent aussi des centres d’intérêt pour les chercheurs. Cette thèse étudie l’application des méthodes de recherche opérationnelle (R.O.) à l’optimisation des chaînes logistiques dans deux contextes précis : le déploiement logistique en situation d’urgence et la logistique hospitalière. Ces contextes particuliers constituent deux domaines en forte croissance présentant des d’impacts majeurs sur la population. Ils sont des contextes de distribution complexes et difficiles qui exigent une approche scientifique rigoureuse afin d’obtenir de bons résultats et, ultimement, garantir le bien-être de la communauté. Les contributions de cette thèse se rapportent à ces deux domaines. D’abord, nous présentons une révision systématique de la littérature sur le déploiement logistique en situation d’urgence (Chapitre 2) qui nous permet de consolider et de classifier les travaux les plus importants du domaine ainsi que d’identifier les lacunes dans les propositions actuelles. Cette analyse supporte notre seconde contribution où nous proposons et évaluons trois modèles pour la conception d’un réseau logistique pour une distribution juste de l’aide (Chapitre 3). Les modèles cherchent à assurer une distribution équitable de l’aide entre les points de demande ainsi qu’une stabilité dans le temps. Ces modèles permettent les arrérages de la demande et adaptent l’offre aux besoins de façon plus flexible et réaliste. Le deuxième axe de recherche découle d’un mandat de recherche avec le Ministère de la Santé et de Services sociaux du Québec (MSSS). En collaboration avec les gestionnaires du système de santé québécois, nous avons abordé la problématique du transport d’échantillons biomédicaux. Nous proposons deux modèles d’optimisation et une approche de résolution simple pour résoudre ce problème difficile de collecte d’échantillons (Chapitre 4). Cette contribution est par la suite généralisée avec la synchronisation des horaires d’ouverture de centres de prélèvement lors de la planification des tournées. Une procédure itérative de recherche locale est proposée pour résoudre le problème (Chapitre 5). Il en découle un outil efficace pour la planification des tournées de véhicules dans le réseau des laboratoires québécois.Optimisation in distribution is a major concern towards the performance’s improvement of manufacturing and service industries. Together with the evolution of the business’ world and technology advancements, new practical challenges need to be faced by managers. These challenges are thus a point of interest to researchers. This thesis concentrates on the application of operational research (O.R.) techniques to optimise supply chains in two precise contexts: relief distribution and healthcare logistics. These two research domains have grown a lot recently and have major impacts on the population. These are two complex and difficult distribution settings that require a scientific approach to improve their performance and thus warrant the welfare among the population. This thesis’s contributions relate to those two axes. First, we present a systematic review of the available literature in relief distribution (Chapter 2) to consolidate and classify the most important works in the field, as well as to identify the research’s gaps in the current propositions and approaches. This analysis inspires and supports our second contribution. In Chapter 3, we present and evaluate three models to optimise the design of relief distribution networks oriented to fairness in distribution. The models seek to ensure an equitable distribution between the points of demand and in a stable fashion in time. In addition, the models allow the backorder of demand to offer a more realistic and flexible distribution plan. The second research context result from a request from Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services (Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux – MSSS). In partnership with the managers of Quebec’s healthcare system, we propose an approach to tackle the biomedical sample transportation problem faced by the laboratories’ network in Quebec’s province. We propose two mathematical formulations and some fast heuristics to solve the problem (Chapter 4). This contribution is later extended to include the opening hours’ synchronisation for the specimen collection centers and the number and frequency of pick-ups. We propose an iterated local search procedure (ILS) to find a routing plan minimising total billable hours (Chapter 5). This leads to an efficient tool to routing planning in the medical laboratories’ network in Quebec

Location-allocation models for relief distribution and victim evacuation after a sudden-onset natural disaster

Quick response to natural disasters is vital to reduce loss of and negative impact to human life. The response is more crucial in the presence of sudden-onset, difficult-to-predict natural disasters, especially in the early period of those events. On-site actions are part of such response, some of which are determination of temporary shelters and/ or temporary medical facility locations, the evacuation process of victims and relief distribution to victims. These activities of last-mile disaster logistics are important as they are directly associated with sufferers, the main focus of any alleviation of losses caused by any disaster. This research deals with the last-mile site positioning of relief supplies and medical facilities in response to a sudden-onset, difficult-to-predict disaster event, both dynamically and in a more coordinative way during a particular planning time horizon. Four mathematical models which reflect the situation in Padang Pariaman District after the West Sumatera earthquake were built and tested. The models are all concerned with making decisions in a rolling time horizon manner, but differ in coordinating the operations and in utilization of information about future resource availability. Model I is a basic model representing the current practice with relief distribution and victim evacuation performed separately and decisions made only considering the resources available at the time. Model II considers coordination between the two operations and conducts them with the same means of transport. Model III takes into account future information keeping the two operations separate. Model IV combines the features of Models II and III. The four models are approached both directly and by using various heuristics. The research shows that conducting relief distribution and victim evacuation activities by using shared vehicles and/or by taking into account future information on resource availability improves the current practice . This is clearly demonstrated by the experimental results on small problems. For large problems, experiments show that it is not practical to directly solve the models, especially the last three, and that the solution quality is poor when the solution process is limited to a reasonable time. Experiments also show that the heuristics help improve the solution quality and that the performances of the heuristics are different for different models. When each model is solved using its own best heuristic, the conclusions from results of large problems get very close to those from small problems. Finally, deviation of future information on resource availability is considered in the study, but is shown not to affect the performance of model III and model IV in carrying out relief distribution and victim evacuation. This indicates that it is always worthwhile to take into account the future information, even if the information is not perfect, as long as it is reasonably reliable