A Total Product System Concept - a case study of the smart (tm) automobile

Increasing demand from consumers plus EU legislation has raised awareness within the automotive production sector of the urgent need to reduce the environmental impacts from the three main stages in vehicle life – car manufacture, car use and end-of life vehicle processing. The paper reviews how the originator and manufacturer of the smart automobile has worked directly with its main system partners to address environmental issues in these three stages while optimizing performance across the parameters of commercial viability. This required the creation of strategic relationships within the supply chain. Overall, this innovative approach is viewed in the context of a total product system. The smart car highlights the following critical areas: use of modularity in product design and production facility layout; emphasis on partner participation from product creation to after-sales; and the use of highly customised build-to-order product system to 'green' the entire supply chain. In particular, the case study compares the process characteristics empoyed at the smart car factory, called 'smartville', with more traditional approaches to vehicle manufacture. It exmaines these issues in a preliminary attempt to establish the actual or potential reduction of environmental impact in the three stages of vehicle life, including the role of main suppliers in this process

Інтерактивна карта оптимального мультиплексного розбиття заданого регіону

Описаний процес створення інтерактивної карти територіальної сегментації даного регіону. Розглянуті технічні аспекти спільного використання сучасних геоінформаційних технологій та методів розв'язання неперервних задач оптимального мультиплексного розбиття множин, що виникають при вирішенні питань розміщення логістичних або сервісних центрів з одночасною сегментацією регіону на їх сфери обслуговування

The Potential of Low-Carbon Hydrogen in Norway : A Linear Programming Analysis of Hydrogen Supply Chains in the Norwegian Energy System Towards 2050

In this thesis, we conducted a linear programming analysis to assess the future potential for domestic production and consumption of low-carbon hydrogen in Norway. Our analysis is based on the Institute for Energy Technology’s long-term energy system model “IFE-TIMESNorway" (ITN), which is intended to describe the Norwegian energy system in its entirety. Our analysis in ITN has been performed according to the current-best estimates for the technoeconomic parameters of hydrogen technologies. The primary focus of our data work with the ITN model has been to expand its range of production technologies by adding steam methane reformation with carbon capture and storage, colloquially known as “blue hydrogen”. This allowed us to explore the potential of hydrogen in increased detail compared to prior analyses with ITN. In our analysis, we have analyzed production and consumption of low-carbon hydrogen, and how it flows through the energy system from a supply chain perspective. This has been analyzed through a variety of model runs intended to capture contrasting energy futures. The primary years of our analysis cover the interval 2030 to 2050. The main findings suggest that there is significant potential for low-carbon hydrogen in the Norwegian energy system towards 2050 in industry, road transport, and maritime transport. Our results indicate that the highest potential for hydrogen is as a feedstock in the metal- and chemical industry, for heavy-duty vehicles in road transport, and in the form of ammonia in maritime transport. The competitiveness of hydrogen is however highly dependent on carbon pricing as a higher CO2 tax is connected to increased volumes of hydrogen production and consumption. In addition, the availability of competing zero-emission alternatives is a significant factor for the potential of hydrogen. For current carbon pricing and its expected future increases, hydrogen is the cost-effective option for many end-use processes based on large- and/or small-scale production. However, carbon prices in excess of current and expected future values are associated with higher volumes and adoption across additional end-use processes. At large scales, steam methane reformation with carbon capture and storage is the dominant hydrogen production technology, but its position is challenged by Alkaline electrolysis if power prices are particularly low. At small scales, a combination of PEM electrolysis and alkaline electrolysis is generally preferred, but PEM is increasingly competitive across the model horizon. In addition, our results suggest that hydrogen may be distributed with trucks, but only for shorter distances within spot price regions.nhhma

Strategic Network Design for Delivery by Drones under Service-based Competition

In today’s world, E-commerce is a fast growing industry and e-retailers are looking for innovative ways to deliver customer orders within short delivery times at a low cost. Currently, the use of drone technology for last-mile delivery is being developed by such companies as Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. Drones are relatively cheaper and faster than trucks but are limited in range and may be restricted in landing and takeoff. Most of the work in the Operations Research literature focusses on the operational challenges of integrating drones with truck delivery. The more strategic questions of whether it is economically feasible to use drones and the effects on distribution network design are rarely addressed. These questions are the focus of this work. We consider an e-retailer offering multiple same day services using both existing vehicles and drones, and develop a facility location problem under service-based competition where the services offered by the e-retailer not only compete with the stores (convenience, grocery, etc.), but also with each other. The competition in the market is incorporated using the Multinomial Logit (MNL) market share model. To solve the resulting nonlinear mathematical formulation we develop a novel logic-based Benders decomposition approach. We also show that the nonlinear model can be transformed into a linear mixed integer formulation. Computational experiments show that our algorithm outperforms direct solution of the linear formulation. We carry out extensive numerical testing of the model and perform sensitivity analyses over pricing, delivery time, government regulations, technological limitations, customer behavior, and market size. The results show that government regulations play a vital role in determining the future of drone delivery

Examining the Determinants of Location Attributes and their Effect on Hotel Pricing in the Period of the Covid-19 Pandemic in an Emerging Market

The emergence of COVID-19 and the consequent travel restrictions have led to a decrease in the patronage of hotel services in nearly all economies in the world. In this circumstance, location attributes have become even more important in hotel pricing and investment decision-making. It is even more interesting to see how this plays out in emerging economies such as Ghana. The study assesses the effect of location attributes on hotel pricing during the COVID-19 pandemic period in Tamale. A sequential mixed research design including Mixed Spatial Hedonic Price Approach, Exploratory Factor Analysis and key informant interviews was employed. A sample of 815 tourists and 163 hotels was used. Hotel class, road accessibility, age of building, and hotel rate are the key determinants of hotel pricing. Among these, the hotel class showed more significance in influencing pricing decisions in the COVID-19 period. The models show that the hotel class with positive coefficients are located outside the city centre of Tamale. This has resulted in increased Yield To Maturity because the hotels located outside the city centre received more clients, with grade one hotels showing a huge net income and good post-COVID-19 investment drive. The results show that potential hotel investors should consider hotel class as a major entry decision factor during and after periods of the pandemic