Regenerating the Logistics Industry through the Physical Internet Paradigm: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Orchestration

The operations of other businesses rely heavily on the logistics sector, making logistics the most crucial industry. There are multiple issues available in the existing logistics sector including the lack of logistics optimization and unsustainability operations. To deal with these issues, the concept of the Physical Internet (PI) has arisen. For this reason, the current study conducts a comprehensive literature review to determine how PI has emerged within the logistics sector to improve its condition. In this research, we present a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the present situation of the PI in the logistics literature by conducting a systematic review of 114 publications published in 39 top journals on the topic between 2007 and 2022. This paper makes three significant contributions to the existing literature using such an analysis. To begin with, it provides an overarching context for the part played by the PI in the overall logistics industry. Second, it provides a road layout of the breadth and depth of the research on PI and the overall logistics, including the approaches taken by researchers, regions covered, sectors examined, and theoretical stances taken by those who have explored the topic thus far. Finally, it addresses the conclusions based on the different clusters discovered and the issues of existing logistics systems along with the moderators of influencing the PI and its outcomes. Given the rising significance of PI and channels for sustainability in the logistics sector, this is the first time that an effort has been made to investigate the function of the PI within the context of overall logistics performance. The paper identifies crucial gaps in research and brings to light different factors that have the potential to shed light on this essential subject. Furthermore, we argue that there is an immediate need to build new business models for enhanced adaptation and execution of the PI strategy, and we urge business managers, academics, and regulators to consider it. In addition, we advocate that professionals scrutinize ways in which the PI approach may be applied to the existing business structures

A systematic literature review on physical internet containers : Empirical evidence and research opportunities

The Physical Internet is an emerging concept that seeks to improve the efficiency and sustainability of global logistics by creating a network under a common structure. Containers are a key tool for implementing this concept, as they enable the efficient and secure transport of goods along standardized hubs. This systematic literature review aims to identify and analyze existing research on the use of containers in the Physical Internet and their contributions to the efficiency and sustainability of global logistics. This review emphasizes the growing significance and empirical evidence supporting the usefulness and benefits of adopting container systems, including improved cargo optimization, logistics operations, and the sustainability of the logistics network. To solve difficulties like standardization, cost implementation, privacy, and integration of technology, more study is required. Regarding the methodology used, first a qualitative study of the articles is made, which will allow us to have a vision of the evolution that has taken place in recent years. Next, a study of the findings and conclusions will be made, which will allow for the classification of the research approaches and contributions. By giving a thorough overview, it provides insightful information for supply chain management, logistics, and other professionals. Furthermore, limitations and unanswered questions will be discussed in order to guide future studies with the identified research opportunities, emphasizing areas that need attention to progress this field’s research. In the last instance, these gaps offer chances to improve our comprehension and use of containers in the supply chain networ

Adaptive multiagent system for seismic emergency management

Presently, most multiagent frameworks are typically programmed in Java. Since the JADE platform has been recently ported to .NET, we used it to create an adaptive multiagent system where the knowledge base of the agents is managed using the CLIPS language, also called from .NET. The multiagent system is applied to create seismic risk scenarios, simulations of emergency situations, in which different parties, modeled as adaptive agents, interact and cooperate.adaptive systems, risk management, seisms.

Urban Parcel Logistics Hub and Network Design: The Impact of Modularity and Hyperconnectivity

This paper examines how exploiting the hyperconnectivity and modularity concepts underpinning the Physical Internet enables the parcel logistics industry to meet the worldwide challenges to efficiently and sustainably offer faster and more precise deliveries across urban agglomerations, notably across the world’s megacities. It emphasizes disruptive transformations of package logistics hubs and networks, such as multi-tier world pixelization, multi-plane parcel logistics web, smart dynamic parcel routing and hub-based consolidation, and modular parcel containerization

Smart Containers With Bidding Capacity: A Policy Gradient Algorithm for Semi-Cooperative Learning

Smart modular freight containers -- as propagated in the Physical Internet paradigm -- are equipped with sensors, data storage capability and intelligence that enable them to route themselves from origin to destination without manual intervention or central governance. In this self-organizing setting, containers can autonomously place bids on transport services in a spot market setting. However, for individual containers it may be difficult to learn good bidding policies due to limited observations. By sharing information and costs between one another, smart containers can jointly learn bidding policies, even though simultaneously competing for the same transport capacity. We replicate this behavior by learning stochastic bidding policies in a semi-cooperative multi agent setting. To this end, we develop a reinforcement learning algorithm based on the policy gradient framework. Numerical experiments show that sharing solely bids and acceptance decisions leads to stable bidding policies. Additional system information only marginally improves performance; individual job properties suffice to place appropriate bids. Furthermore, we find that carriers may have incentives not to share information with the smart containers. The experiments give rise to several directions for follow-up research, in particular the interaction between smart containers and transport services in self-organizing logistics.Comment: 15 page

Introducing the Concept of Hyperconnected Mobile Production

Many globalized businesses are trying to cope with growing competition by strategically expanding their dedicated network of production facilities so as to be able to offer and to deliver time and price competitive offers to their clients across the world. In this paper, exploiting Physical Internet principles, we introduce the concept of hyperconnected mobile production that can alternatively enable businesses to dynamically expand and contract as necessary their production capacity in regions worldwide. First, hyperconnected mobile production exploits open fabs from multiple parties readily available in those regions. Second, these fabs are to rely on plug-and-play production modules. These modules are to be flowed in and out of open fabs worldwide by the fab operators or their business clients so as to absorb dynamic production requirements from customers. Third, the production modules are to be dynamically re-configurable through adding and removing plug-and-play modular resources. We first show that hyperconnected mobile production builds on eight innovation threads: distributed, outsourced, on-demand, modular, additive, mobile, containerized and hyperconnected production. We then provide an overall description of key facets of the hyperconnected mobile production concept and finally elicit a number of promising research avenues

Multi-Agent Based Security Framework for E-Government in Recently technology Developed Countries

E-Government is an environment where government produces services to citizens electronically, this is beside services to other e-Governments, and one crucial factor regarding the reliability of accepting services provided by e-Government is the security factor. This work is targeting Countries in their developing process that need to develop configurable management model, that capable of adapting security technologies to other factors revealed from the society.  The configuration of this management model will be autonomously built up through the association of three domains presented by this proposal: policies, measures and infrastructure. Along this work; ontology will be built up to accommodate these domains and eventually to grant Agent software the ability to perceive the environment and configure the management model for deploying security technologies. Keywords: Socio-Techno, Java Agent, Security policy, eGovernment, JADE, Ontology, knowledge development

Positioning Automated Guided Vehicles in a General Guide-path Layout

The locations of dwell points for idle vehicles in an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system determine the response times for pick-up requests and thus affect the performance of automated manufacturing systems. In this study, we address the problem of optimally locating dwell points for multiple AGVs in general guide-path layouts with the objective of minimizing the maximum response time in the system. We propose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for the problem. We also develop a generic genetic algorithm (GA) to find near optimal solutions. The MILP model and GA procedure are illustrated using a two-dimensional grid layout problem. Our computational study shows that the proposed GA procedure can yield near optimal solutions for these test problems in reasonable time

Using the Crowd of Taxis to Last Mile Delivery in E-commerce: a Methodological Research

International audienceCrowdsourcing is garnering increased attention in freight transport area, mainly applied in internet-based services to city logistics. However, scientific research, especially methodology for application is still rare in the literature. This paper aims to fill this gap and to propose a methodological approach of applying crowdsourcing solution to Last Mile Delivery in E-commerce environment. The proposed solution is based on taxi fleet in city and a transport network composed by road network and customer self-pickup facilities that are 24 hours shops in city, named as TaxiCrowdShipping system. The system relies on a two-phase decision model, first offline taxi trajectory mining and second online package routing and taxi scheduling. Being the first stage of our study, this paper introduces the framework of the system and the decision model development. Some expected results and research perspectives are also discussed. 1 Introduction In E-commerce environment, Last Mile Delivery (hereafter LMD) is the problem of transport planning for delivering goods from e-retailers' hub to the final destination in the area, for example the end consumers' home, see [1] and [2]. Speed and cost are the two crucial success factors to LMD. Faster shipping while with lower cost is the major challenge; nevertheless, it is also a paradox to a certain extend. Indeed, when customers are given a choice between fast and cheap delivery, most of them choose the cheap one, observed by a recent report [3]. The report also infers that that low-cost, speedy two-day delivery corresponds to most customers' expectation, opposite to the one-day delivery policy pursued by giant e-retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba etc. This fact may open up new opportunities to innovative freight transport models [4] for LMD aiming at reducing delivery cost while respecting shipping time