Synchromodal logistics: An overview of critical success factors, enabling technologies, and open research issues

Abstract As supply chain management is becoming demand driven, logistics service providers need to use real-time information efficiently and integrate new technologies into their business. Synchromodal logistics has emerged recently to improve flexibility in supply chains, cooperation among stakeholders, and utilization of resources. We survey the existing scientific literature and real-life developments on synchromodality. We focus on the critical success factors of synchromodality and six categories of enabling technologies. We identify open research issues and propose the introduction of a new stakeholder, which takes on the role of orchestrator to coordinate and provide services through a technology-based platform

Total safety by design: Increased safety and operability of supply chain of inland terminals for containers with dangerous goods

[EN] In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the international transport of containers with dangerous goods, increasing the risk of seaports and surrounding cities together with the introduction of inherent environmental and security disaster risks. Therefore, there is an increasing interest in seaports that are more socially inclusive, addressing the storage of containers of hazardous goods to safe inland terminals. An appropriate design of inland terminals for containers with dangerous goods (ITDGs) may contribute to the achievement of a sustainable development and the minimization of risks, avoiding disasters such as Tianjin. The objective of this study was the analysis of the criteria used for the design of safe, secure, cost efficient and greener ITDGs by applying the multicriteria decision theory AHP (analytic hierarchy process). Criteria regarding safety and security, environmental care, productivity and information and communication technologies (ICT) have been considered simultaneously into a total performance management system. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public funding entity: Generalitat Valenciana.Molero Prieto, GD.; Santarremigia Rosaleny, FE.; Aragonés-Beltrán, P.; Pastor-Ferrando, J. (2017). Total safety by design: Increased safety and operability of supply chain of inland terminals for containers with dangerous goods. Safety Science. 100(B):168-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2016.10.007S168182100

Capacity Planning with Uncertainty on Contract Fulfillment

This paper focuses on the tactical planning problem faced by a shipper which seeks to secure transportation and warehousing capacity, such as containers, vehicles or space in a warehouse, of different sizes, costs, and characteristics, from a carrier or logistics provider, while facing different sources of uncertainty. The uncertainty can be related to the loads to be transported or stored, the cost and availability of ad-hoc capacity on the spot market in the future, and the availability of the contracted capacity in the future when the shipper needs it. This last source of uncertainty on the capacity loss on the contracted capacity is particularly important in both long-haul transportation and urban distribution applications, but no optimization methodology has been proposed so far. We introduce the Stochastic Variable Cost and Size Bin Packing with Capacity Loss problem and model that directly address this issue, together with a metaheuristic to efficiently address it. We perform a set of extensive numerical experiments on instances related to long-haul transportation and urban distribution contexts and derive managerial insights on how such capacity planning should be performed

Anticipatory freight selection in intermodal long-haul round-trips

We consider a Logistic Service Provider (LSP) that transports freight periodically in a long-haul round-trip. At the start of a round-trip, the LSP consolidates freights in a long-haul vehicle and delivers them to multiple destinations in a region. Within this region, the LSP picks up freights using the same vehicle and transports them back to the starting location. The same region is visited every period, independent of which freights were consolidated. Consequently, di erences in costs between two periods are due to the destinations visited (for delivery and pickup of freights) and the use of an alternative transport mode. Freights have di erent time-windows and become known gradually over time. The LSP has probabilistic knowledge about the arrival of freights and their characteristics. Using this knowledge, the goal of the LSP is to consolidate freights in a way that minimizes the total costs over time. To achieve this goal, we propose the use of a look-ahead policy, which is computed using an Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) algorithm. We test our solution method using information from a Dutch LSP that transports containers daily, by barge, from the East of the country to di erent terminals in the port of Rotterdam, and back. We show that, under di erent instances of this real-life information, the use of an ADP policy yields cost reductions up to 25.5% compared to a benchmark policy. Furthermore, we discuss our ndings for several network settings and state characteristics, thereby providing key managerial insights about look-ahead policies in intermodal long-haul round-trips

Technical, economic and energetic competitiveness of rail-road combined transport: evaluation of the effects of possible ITS applications on intermodal terminal.

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