LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volum

Ordonnancement de camions dans une plateforme logistique : complexité, méthodes de résolution et incertitudes

La problématique dite de crossdocking a été source de beaucoup d'attention ces dernières années dans la littérature. Un crossdock est une plateforme logistique favorisant, par une synchronisation efficace des camions entrants et sortants, une rotation rapide des produits, le volume de produits stockés devant être le plus faible possible. Le crossdocking soulève de nombreux problèmes logistiques, dont notamment celui de l'ordonnancement des camions entrants et sortants sur les quais de la plateforme. L'objectif classiquement considéré dans la littérature pour ce problème est la minimisation du makespan, critère très répandu en d'ordonnancement. Pour le crossdocking néanmoins, minimiser la date de départ du dernier camion ne garantie pas nécessairement une bonne synchronisation des camions et le makespan ne semble donc pas être l'objectif le plus pertinent. Pour répondre au besoin de synchronisation et favoriser les rotations rapides, notre travail propose alternativement de minimiser la somme des temps de séjour des palettes dans le stock. Nous étudions d'abord la version déterministe de ce problème d'ordonnancement. Sa complexité est détaillée selon différentes hypothèses pour identifier les éléments menant à sa NP-difficulté. Différentes méthodes de résolutions sont proposées. Une méthode classique de programmation linéaire en nombres entiers utilisant des variables de décision indexées par le temps. Une famille d'inégalités valides est également proposée et exploitée dans un algorithme avec ajout itératif de coupes. Des méthodes basées sur la programmation par contraintes sont enfin proposées. Une analyse comparative de ces différentes méthodes est proposée. Dans un deuxième temps, nous étudions une version non-déterministe de notre problème d'ordonnancement dans laquelle des incertitudes sur les dates d'arrivée des camions sont introduites sous la forme d'intervalles de temps équiprobables. Une méthode d'ordonnancement proactive-réactive utilisant le concept de groupes d'opérations permutables est proposée pour faire face aux incertitudes. Des groupes de camions permutables sont séquencés et affectés aux quais puis, durant l'exécution d'ordonnancement, en fonction de la réalisation des dates d'arrivée, un ordre est choisi dans chaque groupe à l'aide d'un algorithme réactif.Crossdocking has received a lot of attention in the literature in recent years. A crossdock is a logistic platform that promotes rapid product turnover through efficient synchronization of incoming and outgoing trucks, with the volume of products stored being kept as low as possible. Crossdocking raises many logistical problems, including the scheduling of incoming and outgoing trucks on the platform's docks. The classical objective considered in the literature for this problem is the minimization of the makespan, a very common criterion in scheduling. However, for crossdocking, minimizing the departure date of the last truck does not necessarily guarantee a good synchronization of the trucks and the makespan does not seem to be the most relevant objective. In order to meet the need for synchronization and to help fast rotations, our work proposes alternatively to minimize the sum of the pallets' sojourn times in the warehouse. We first study the deterministic version of this scheduling problem. Its complexity is detailed under different assumptions to identify the elements leading to its NP-hardness. Different solution methods are proposed. A classical integer linear programming method using time-indexed decision variables. A family of valid inequalities is also proposed and exploited in an algorithm with iterative addition of cuts. Finally, methods based on constraint programming are proposed. A comparative analysis of these different methods is proposed. In a second step, we study a non-deterministic version of our scheduling problem in which uncertainties on truck arrival dates are introduced in the form of equiprobable time intervals. A proactive-reactive scheduling method using the concept of permutable operation groups is proposed to cope with the uncertainties. Groups of permutable trucks are sequenced and assigned to the docks and then, during the scheduling run, based on the realization of arrival dates, an order is chosen in each group using a reactive algorithm

Obstacles and Challenges affecting the move towards Universal Healthcare Coverage in Nigeria

There is increasing pressure for low and middle-income countries to move towards achieving universal healthcare coverage (UHC). According to WHO (2013), UHC guarantees the right to affordable health care for every individual, without financial hardship. The Director-General to the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan (WHO, 2010 p. 1), says UHC “is the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer”.In recent years, UHC has come onto the policy agenda, but Nigeria has been criticised for its slow progress. This study investigates why and how the UHC policy is developed by focusing on the roles and interactions of policy actors, their policy setting, and ‘how’ their actions influence the policy process and outcome of UHC so far in Nigeria. It will provide evidence of Nigeria’s policy process that will enhance the understanding of the politics of such health care policy implementation processes, which is fundamental to the success of policy networks of UHC in low- and middle-income settings.This is an empirical study using a mixed method approach involving quantitative and qualitative research components. The study combines the social network analysis (the quantitative component) with a more general policy process framework (the qualitative component). Data collected between March 2016 and February 2017 involved face-to-face structured interviews, face-to-face semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis to identify members of relevant policy networks and describe the pattern of relationships and influence within the UHC discourse.The SNA analysis displayed a full structural network taxonomy of the UHC policy process and identified key members of the UHC discourse into four key institutions and organisations- such as the power actors, peripheral actors, gatekeepers or brokers, isolated actors, and policy actors connected to the power actors.The theoretical policy process framework highlights five key gaps that exist as challenges and obstacles which impedes the implementation process of UHC Nigeria. These challenges and obstacles include, changing political climate, concerns about system capacity and finance, poor coordination between federal and state levels, corruption and problems with the private sector – HMOs. These challenges and obstacles limit the government’s ability to provide social and financial risk protection and access to quality health services to vulnerable Nigerian communities.Drawing on the theoretical framework and intervention, this thesis concludes that the political, policy, financial and organizational constraints of the health system limit UHC Nigeria implementation progress. Addressing the reasons why these issues ensue would be helpful in taking strategic steps towards achieving financial protection and access to basic health services through UHC for many Nigerians

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Restorative and Responsive Human Services

In Restorative and Responsive Human Services, Gale Burford, John Braithwaite, and Valerie Braithwaite bring together a distinguished collection providing rich lessons on how regulation in human services can proceed in empowering ways that heal and are respectful of human relationships and legal obligations. The human services are in trouble: combining restorative justice with responsive regulation might redeem them, renewing their well-intended principles. Families provide glue that connects complex systems. What are the challenges in scaling up relational practices that put families and primary groups at the core of health, education, and other social services? This collection has a distinctive focus on the relational complexity of restorative practices. How do they enable more responsive ways of grappling with complexity than hierarchical and prescriptive human services? Lessons from responsive business regulation inform a re-imagining of the human services to advance wellbeing and reduce domination. Readers are challenged to re-examine the perverse incentives and contradictions buried in policies and practices. How do they undermine the capacities of families and communities to solve problems on their own terms? This book will interest those who harbor concerns about the creep of domination into the lives of vulnerable citizens. It will help policymakers and researchers to re-focus human services to fundamental outcomes at the foundation of sustainable democracies

AN EFFICIENT INTERFERENCE AVOIDANCE SCHEME FOR DEVICE-TODEVICE ENABLED FIFTH GENERATION NARROWBAND INTERNET OF THINGS NETWOKS’

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a low-power wide-area (LPWA) technology built on long-term evolution (LTE) functionalities and standardized by the 3rd-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Due to its support for massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and different IoT use cases with rigorous standards in terms of connection, energy efficiency, reachability, reliability, and latency, NB-IoT has attracted the research community. However, as the capacity needs for various IoT use cases expand, the LTE evolved packet core (EPC) system's numerous functionalities may become overburdened and suboptimal. Several research efforts are currently in progress to address these challenges. As a result, an overview of these efforts with a specific focus on the optimized architecture of the LTE EPC functionalities, the 5G architectural design for NB-IoT integration, the enabling technologies necessary for 5G NB-IoT, 5G new radio (NR) coexistence with NB-IoT, and feasible architectural deployment schemes of NB-IoT with cellular networks is discussed. This thesis also presents cloud-assisted relay with backscatter communication as part of a detailed study of the technical performance attributes and channel communication characteristics from the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers of the NB-IoT, with a focus on 5G. The numerous drawbacks that come with simulating these systems are explored. The enabling market for NB-IoT, the benefits for a few use cases, and the potential critical challenges associated with their deployment are all highlighted. Fortunately, the cyclic prefix orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CPOFDM) based waveform by 3GPP NR for improved mobile broadband (eMBB) services does not prohibit the use of other waveforms in other services, such as the NB-IoT service for mMTC. As a result, the coexistence of 5G NR and NB-IoT must be manageably orthogonal (or quasi-orthogonal) to minimize mutual interference that limits the form of freedom in the waveform's overall design. As a result, 5G coexistence with NB-IoT will introduce a new interference challenge, distinct from that of the legacy network, even though the NR's coexistence with NB-IoT is believed to improve network capacity and expand the coverage of the user data rate, as well as improves robust communication through frequency reuse. Interference challenges may make channel estimation difficult for NB-IoT devices, limiting the user performance and spectral efficiency. Various existing interference mitigation solutions either add to the network's overhead, computational complexity and delay or are hampered by low data rate and coverage. These algorithms are unsuitable for an NB-IoT network owing to the low-complexity nature. As a result, a D2D communication based interference-control technique becomes an effective strategy for addressing this problem. This thesis used D2D communication to decrease the network bottleneck in dense 5G NBIoT networks prone to interference. For D2D-enabled 5G NB-IoT systems, the thesis presents an interference-avoidance resource allocation that considers the less favourable cell edge NUEs. To simplify the algorithm's computing complexity and reduce interference power, the system divides the optimization problem into three sub-problems. First, in an orthogonal deployment technique using channel state information (CSI), the channel gain factor is leveraged by selecting a probable reuse channel with higher QoS control. Second, a bisection search approach is used to find the best power control that maximizes the network sum rate, and third, the Hungarian algorithm is used to build a maximum bipartite matching strategy to choose the optimal pairing pattern between the sets of NUEs and the D2D pairs. The proposed approach improves the D2D sum rate and overall network SINR of the 5G NB-IoT system, according to the numerical data. The maximum power constraint of the D2D pair, D2D's location, Pico-base station (PBS) cell radius, number of potential reuse channels, and cluster distance impact the D2D pair's performance. The simulation results achieve 28.35%, 31.33%, and 39% SINR performance higher than the ARSAD, DCORA, and RRA algorithms when the number of NUEs is twice the number of D2D pairs, and 2.52%, 14.80%, and 39.89% SINR performance higher than the ARSAD, RRA, and DCORA when the number of NUEs and D2D pairs are equal. As a result, a D2D sum rate increase of 9.23%, 11.26%, and 13.92% higher than the ARSAD, DCORA, and RRA when the NUE’s number is twice the number of D2D pairs, and a D2D’s sum rate increase of 1.18%, 4.64% and 15.93% higher than the ARSAD, RRA and DCORA respectively, with an equal number of NUEs and D2D pairs is achieved. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme. The thesis also addressed the problem where the cell-edge NUE's QoS is critical to challenges such as long-distance transmission, delays, low bandwidth utilization, and high system overhead that affect 5G NB-IoT network performance. In this case, most cell-edge NUEs boost their transmit power to maximize network throughput. Integrating cooperating D2D relaying technique into 5G NB-IoT heterogeneous network (HetNet) uplink spectrum sharing increases the system's spectral efficiency and interference power, further degrading the network. Using a max-max SINR (Max-SINR) approach, this thesis proposed an interference-aware D2D relaying strategy for 5G NB-IoT QoS improvement for a cell-edge NUE to achieve optimum system performance. The Lagrangian-dual technique is used to optimize the transmit power of the cell-edge NUE to the relay based on the average interference power constraint, while the relay to the NB-IoT base station (NBS) employs a fixed transmit power. To choose an optimal D2D relay node, the channel-to-interference plus noise ratio (CINR) of all available D2D relays is used to maximize the minimum cell-edge NUE's data rate while ensuring the cellular NUEs' QoS requirements are satisfied. Best harmonic mean, best-worst, half-duplex relay selection, and a D2D communication scheme were among the other relaying selection strategies studied. The simulation results reveal that the Max-SINR selection scheme outperforms all other selection schemes due to the high channel gain between the two communication devices except for the D2D communication scheme. The proposed algorithm achieves 21.27% SINR performance, which is nearly identical to the half-duplex scheme, but outperforms the best-worst and harmonic selection techniques by 81.27% and 40.29%, respectively. As a result, as the number of D2D relays increases, the capacity increases by 14.10% and 47.19%, respectively, over harmonic and half-duplex techniques. Finally, the thesis presents future research works on interference control in addition with the open research directions on PHY and MAC properties and a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis presented in Chapter 2 to encourage further study on 5G NB-IoT