Dynamic scheduling of recreational rental vehicles with revenue management extensions

The rental fleet scheduling problem (RFSP) arises in vehicle-rental operations that offer a wide variety of vehicle types to customers, and allow a rented vehicle to migrate to a setdown depot other than the pickup depot. When there is a shortage of vehicles of a particular type at a depot, vehicles may be relocated to that depot, or vehicles of similar types may be substituted. The RFSP involves assigning vehicles to rentals so as to minimise the costs of these operations, and arises in both static and online contexts. The authors have adapted a well-known assignment algorithm for application in the online context. In addition, a network-flow algorithm with more comprehensive coverage of problem conditions is used to investigate the determination of rental pricing using revenue management principles. The paper concludes with an outline of the algorithms use in supporting the operations of a large recreational vehicle rental company

REDUCING CUSTOMER WAIT TIME AND IMPROVING PROCESSES AT ABC’s ATV RENTALS

This project serves to explore the system bottlenecks of a small, family owned ATV rental company. The main objective is to reduce the average time a customer spends in the system, focusing on customer wait time as well as other areas that can be improved. This was done by collecting time studies and inputting the values into simulation software, which was run to represent the current system as well as various other possible scenarios encountered by rental companies. While creating the simulation, adaptive techniques were incorporated into the simulation. These techniques aim to increase the durability and reusability of the simulation for future use. An example of incorporating adaptive simulation is through having the simulation software draw values from an Excel spreadsheet. This example of adaptive simulation targets the efficiency of use, as values and formulas are easier to calculate and visualize in Excel than the simulation software. Through the scenarios created in the simulation software, the main system bottleneck was discovered to be the company’s trailer fleet size. Several scenarios were then created to further explore the theory and resulted in confirming it. The results of this analysis conclude that to reduce customer wait time in the system, the company should increase its fleet size by one trailer. A secondary, no cost solution is to eliminate ATV load/unload times by moving ATVs to the dunes prior to customer arrival instead of loading them on a customer by customer basis

TDOT 25-Year Long-Range Transportation Policy Plan, Mobility Policy Paper

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-transportation-25-year-transportation-policy/1005/thumbnail.jp

Personalized advertisement assignment system

This thesis presents a comprehensive framework which will be used to maximize the advertising revenues of a company that develops a 3-D virtual reality social platform. The comprehensive framework includes the development of a personalized advertising business model for the company, representation of the business model with a mathematical program and proposing a set of heuristic solutions for the personalized advertising problem. The proposed heuristics are developed and their performances are compared with an experimental analysis under various conditions

Making place through urban restructuring : the case of Mthatha

This dissertation explores the notion of using design in a manner that (re)embraces and (re)amplifies the unique qualities that define the South African city, in this case – Mthatha. I emphasize "(re)" as over the last 80 years, South Africa's cities have been structured and restructured according to the dictates of the Modern Movement whose ideas are rooted in the separation of the functions of "live, work and play" (Athens Charter 1933). Its most ardent propagators also argued that humanity's habitual needs could be accommodated for through the triumphs of industry and technology. It was also held that the sensitive consideration of the unique characteristics of a particular place be consigned to the dust-bin of history. This was in favour of a universal design language that would homogenize space. These ideas arrived in South Africa almost as soon as they were formulated in Europe through the links that academic architects such as Rex Martienssen had CIAM (Parnell and Marbin 2000). The institutionalisation of apartheid in 1948 also found in Modernism the appropriate tools of separation with which to carry out its ideology spatially. My analysis and evaluation of Mthatha, presented here after 3 visits to the city, confirms that the city is currently structured and continues to grow in a manner that ignores its unique qualities giving rise to a feeling of placelessness. Moreover, the influence of global capital has facilitated its commodification in the form of shopping malls and supermarkets which negatively manipulate its local economy and exacerbate this feeling. It is within this context that I propose the restructuring of Mthatha, informed by ideas drawn from Place Theory, Contextualism and Collage City as well as Dynamic City/ Minimalism. Through these propositions, I show that it is possible to regain the qualities of a place through minimalist design interventions that clarify city structure in a manner that informs the growth of the city along a trajectory that respects and embraces that which defines its uniqueness