Logistics outsourcing and 3PL selection: A Case study in an automotive supply chain

Outsourcing logistics functions to third-party logistics (3PL) providers has been a source of competitive advantage for most companies. Companies cite greater flexibility, operational efficiency, improved customer service levels, and a better focus on their core businesses as part of the advantages of engaging the services of 3PL providers. There are few complete and structured methodologies for selecting a 3PL provider. This paper discusses how one such methodology, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), is used in an automotive supply chain for export parts to redesign the logistics operations and to select a global logistics service provider

Development of the evaluation system for automobile remanufacturing

By 2015, the EU directives required the automobile manufacturers to produce a vehicle that contains reusable and / or recoverable parts at least 95% of total weight. In the developed countries, the legislative issue the take – back policy which requires the manufacturers to consider the end – of – life (EOL) of their products at early design stage. The goal of this paper is to propose a framework of development methodology that focuses on integrated design for remanufacturing evaluation system. This system supports the automobile product design and development at the early design phase. The proposed method is divided into two phases. The first phase aims to identify the suitable EOL process. The second phase aims to verify the most economical EOL process. The proposed method incorporates the Case base Reasoning [CBR] into the remanufacturing techniques. It is expected that the proposed method can provide the EOL with decision support during designing the automobile parts at the early design stage

Tackling Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows by means of Ant Colony System

The Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (DVRPTW) is an extension of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), which takes into account the dynamic nature of the problem. This aspect requires the vehicle routes to be updated in an ongoing manner as new customer requests arrive in the system and must be incorporated into an evolving schedule during the working day. Besides the vehicle capacity constraint involved in the classical VRP, DVRPTW considers in addition time windows, which are able to better capture real-world situations. Despite this, so far, few studies have focused on tackling this problem of greater practical importance. To this end, this study devises for the resolution of DVRPTW, an ant colony optimization based algorithm, which resorts to a joint solution construction mechanism, able to construct in parallel the vehicle routes. This method is coupled with a local search procedure, aimed to further improve the solutions built by ants, and with an insertion heuristics, which tries to reduce the number of vehicles used to service the available customers. The experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive and effective, and on DVRPTW instances with a higher dynamicity level, it is able to yield better results compared to existing ant-based approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Control of Robotic Mobility-On-Demand Systems: a Queueing-Theoretical Perspective

In this paper we present and analyze a queueing-theoretical model for autonomous mobility-on-demand (MOD) systems where robotic, self-driving vehicles transport customers within an urban environment and rebalance themselves to ensure acceptable quality of service throughout the entire network. We cast an autonomous MOD system within a closed Jackson network model with passenger loss. It is shown that an optimal rebalancing algorithm minimizing the number of (autonomously) rebalancing vehicles and keeping vehicles availabilities balanced throughout the network can be found by solving a linear program. The theoretical insights are used to design a robust, real-time rebalancing algorithm, which is applied to a case study of New York City. The case study shows that the current taxi demand in Manhattan can be met with about 8,000 robotic vehicles (roughly 60% of the size of the current taxi fleet). Finally, we extend our queueing-theoretical setup to include congestion effects, and we study the impact of autonomously rebalancing vehicles on overall congestion. Collectively, this paper provides a rigorous approach to the problem of system-wide coordination of autonomously driving vehicles, and provides one of the first characterizations of the sustainability benefits of robotic transportation networks.Comment: 10 pages, To appear at RSS 201

Scheduler-oriented algorithms to improve human-machine cooperation in transportation scheduling support systems

International audienceA decision support system designed to enhance human-machine interaction in transportation scheduling is proposed. We aim to integrate human factors and ergonomics from the beginning of the design phase and to propose a system fitted with enough flexibility to be able to deal with the characteristics of a dynamic context such as transportation scheduling. In this interdisciplinary approach, a link is done between problem solving methods (operations research techniques and data classification algorithms) and human-machine interaction (solving control modes). A set of scheduler-oriented algorithms favouring human-machine cooperation for problem solving is proposed. Some of these algorithms have been efficiently tested on instances of the literature. Finally, an original framework aiming to assist scheduler in constraint relaxation when the problem becomes infeasible is proposed and evaluated

From Business model to Business model portfolio in the european biopharmaceutical industry

At the crossroad of firm's core competencies and of the anticipations of consumers' needs, the business model approach complements corporate and business strategy approaches. Firms combine several business models simultaneously to deliver value to different markets, building a portfolio of business model. For managers, business model and business model portfolio are particularly useful to address customer's needs and organisational capabilities of the firm. They also emphasise how the initial core competency of the firm can be extended or redeployed to increase the rent. Business model portfolio describes the firm's strategy to balance time-to-market, revenue stream, risk and interdependencies. It conceptualises firm diversification within the same industry to generate and capture rents. They finally describe two generic dimensions: core competence extension to enlarge the market and to address additional customers and core competence redeployment to serve similar market with the same core competence.Biopharmaceutical; portfolio; corporate strategy; business strategy; core competence; coherence; value chain

Incremental Consistency Checking in Delta-oriented UML-Models for Automation Systems

Automation systems exist in many variants and may evolve over time in order to deal with different environment contexts or to fulfill changing customer requirements. This induces an increased complexity during design-time as well as tedious maintenance efforts. We already proposed a multi-perspective modeling approach to improve the development of such systems. It operates on different levels of abstraction by using well-known UML-models with activity, composite structure and state chart models. Each perspective was enriched with delta modeling to manage variability and evolution. As an extension, we now focus on the development of an efficient consistency checking method at several levels to ensure valid variants of the automation system. Consistency checking must be provided for each perspective in isolation, in-between the perspectives as well as after the application of a delta.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2016, arXiv:1603.0857

Beyond Personalization: Research Directions in Multistakeholder Recommendation

Recommender systems are personalized information access applications; they are ubiquitous in today's online environment, and effective at finding items that meet user needs and tastes. As the reach of recommender systems has extended, it has become apparent that the single-minded focus on the user common to academic research has obscured other important aspects of recommendation outcomes. Properties such as fairness, balance, profitability, and reciprocity are not captured by typical metrics for recommender system evaluation. The concept of multistakeholder recommendation has emerged as a unifying framework for describing and understanding recommendation settings where the end user is not the sole focus. This article describes the origins of multistakeholder recommendation, and the landscape of system designs. It provides illustrative examples of current research, as well as outlining open questions and research directions for the field.Comment: 64 page

Coopetition for innovative freight transport solutions in Swedish retail

Many companies today strive to reduce their environmental impact. A potential strategy to reduce CO2 emissions is horizontal cooperation between actors on the same level of different supply chains. The strategy opens for cooperation, in for example such non-core activities as distribution and transportation, between companies with a competitive relationship. Larger transport networks increase the possibility to combine optimal routes and consolidate goods. There is also an opportunity for joint facilities which further decrease costs and possibly reduce the total driven kilometres due to more direct routes. This master thesis will analyse participating companies’ transport networks and identify collaboration synergies. This to be able to investigate the effects on costs and the environmental impact that horizontal cooperation has. In order to quantify these effects, a constructed case has been built up consisting of two case companies. The case companies are the two largest grocery retailing companies in Sweden - ICA and Coop, with a total market share of around 70%. The purpose of this master thesis has been to test how a dyadic horizontal distribution cooperation effects the CO2 emissions and costs for large grocery retailers in Sweden. The transportation networks for each company have been built in the Supply Chain Guru software. The networks have then been combined with joint distribution terminals to investigate how shared distribution facilities influence the total cost and CO2 emissions. Given the underlying assumptions in the models, the results show a potential to reduce distribution costs by 6.2% and reduce CO2 emissions by 1%. These results show a great potential for horizontal cooperation and the potential could increase even more when adding more aspects such as joint distribution planning and supplier collections. The analysis requires a state-of-the-art supply chain design software and a software analysis has been carried out. The software is needed to be able to build up large network models and see how changes in the supply chain design affects the environmental impact and the costs. Out of 13 software, six software was possible candidates and out of those two where thoroughly tested. The software analysis showed that out of these two, LLamasoft Supply Chain Guru was the most suitable software and has been used in the analysis. Horizontal cooperation opens new innovative ways for companies to act and cut logistics costs and reduce the environmental impact. This master thesis’ purpose was to test how a dyadic horizontal cooperation affect CO2 emissions and logistics cost and shows that horizontal cooperation has a large potential for the two largest companies in the Swedish retail industry. This should invite to more research in the area, including more companies and other industries to truly investigate the vast possibilities of horizontal cooperation