1,951 research outputs found

    Delaware Valley Truck Parking Study

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    The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission's (DVRPC's) Regional Truck Parking Study was undertaken due to the important economic, environmental, and safety implications of a sufficient regional truck parking network. Truck drivers must work within the bounds of the federally mandated hours-of-service (HOS) rules and regulations. The combination of limited hours of driving, complex supply chains, and narrow delivery windows leads to a need for safe and secure overnight parking.Truck parking is usually provided by three different types of facilities: privately owned truck stops, service plazas, and welcome centers. This report contains details about each type of facility in the Delaware Valley region, including the amenities offered to drivers, the number of spaces, and proximity to other facilities. At present, the region possesses a total of 1,122 spaces, 879 of which are located at privately owned truck stops.The report estimates parking demand using two different methods. Overnight site visits were done to determine the utilization of authorized facilities and the location and utilization of unauthorized parking locations. The region's authorized facilities were found to be operating over capacity by 134 trucks during the site visits, with the Valley Forge and Woodrow Wilson Service Plazas accounting for 91 of those surplus trucks. Additional unauthorized parking was found on highway shoulders, around toll plazas, and in local industrial areas. Truck parking demand was also determined by adopting the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Truck Parking Demand Model to the region. The model determined that the region had a shortfall of 247 spaces in 2009.Finally, the report offers a set of multi-regional and regional actions intended to improve the regional truck parking network:Action 1: Fully utilize available public funding that directly supports the creation of additional overnight truck parking spacesAction 2: Advance the use of the latest Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies to optimize existing parking locationsAction 3: Reduce emissions that are caused by idling parked trucks Throughout the report, blue call-out boxes will be presented; they contain related information and interesting anecdotes pertinent to the topic under discussion.Action 4: Promote the need for additional truck parking spaces and amenities to both DVRPC partners and the publicAction 5: Improve access to existing truck parking facilitiesAction 6: Maintain existing facilities and create additional regional capacity where possibleAs with all work from DVRPC's Office of Freight Planning, this report was made possible by the continued support of the Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force

    The Emergence of Successful Export Activities in Mexico: Three Case Studies

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    This paper consists of three case studies of the emergence of three successful export activities in Mexico: avocado production, the manufacture of catheters, and call center outsourcing. Each case study discusses how companies, associations, and governments at various levels have addressed market failures and facilitated the provision of public goods necessary for each activity. The case studies additionally profile first movers in each activity and describe the positive externalities they provide to imitators, particularly diffusion of export knowledge. Also include in each case study is a counterfactual case of a less successful activity (mangos, stem cell banking, and other types of business process outsourcing, respectively) and a section on policy implications.Agriculture, Exports, Manufacturing, Services, Mexico

    Workshop sensing a changing world : proceedings workshop November 19-21, 2008

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    Humanitarian Logistics: Shipping Designs for the Post Disaster Cargo Surge

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    In 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The humanitarian aid community scrambled a response to support the 3.4 million people affected by the disaster. In response, thousands of shipping containers filled with supplies were sent to the island. Numerous reports surfaced regarding significant delays in receiving the shipments. This research reviews the historical account of cargo throughput into Puerto Rico following Maria. A computer simulation built in ARENA compares various what-if scenarios based on empirically collected data and interviews with FEMA, port authorities, and commercial cargo carriers to determine how the humanitarian supply chain could improve for future disaster planning. An additional goal of this research is to better inform humanitarian logisticians who must balance near-term disaster response demands with long term recovery concerns

    A Simulation Study of Workforce Management for a Two-Stage Multi-Skill Customer Service Center

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    This paper considers the parameter optimization of a two-stage multi-skill customer service center, which provides e-commerce services to customers and bears the major operating cost in hiring service agents. Based on the customer flow in the two-stage mixed queueing system, a simulation model is developed to determine the system performance of interest. We present a sensitivity analysis to achieve better savings in the staffing cost and waiting time at a guaranteed service level. A series of simulation experiments are conducted via an Arena simulation platform to figure out the optimal system configurations. The contribution of our works is to provide a decision-making tool for workforce managers to evaluate the performance of the studied customer service centers

    Impact of post-event avoidance behavior on commercial facilities sector venues-literature review.

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    The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), focused a great deal of interest and concern on how individual and social perceptions of risk change behavior and subsequently affect commercial sector venues. Argonne conducted a review of the literature to identify studies that quantify the direct and indirect economic consequences of avoidance behaviors that result from terrorist attacks. Despite a growing amount of literature addressing terrorism impacts, relatively little is known about the causal relationships between risk perception, human avoidance behaviors, and the economic effects on commercial venues. Nevertheless, the technical and academic literature does provide some evidence, both directly and by inference, of the level and duration of post-event avoidance behaviors on commercial venues. Key findings are summarized in this Executive Summary. Also included as an appendix is a more detailed summary table of literature findings reproduced from the full report

    A multi-echelon supply chain model for strategic inventory assessment through the deployment of kanbans

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    Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-102).As global competition in the manufacturing space grows, so do corporations' needs for sophisticated and optimized management systems to enable continuous flows of information and materials across the many tiers within their supply chains. With the complexities introduced by the variability in the demand for finished goods as well as by the variability in lead-time of transportation, procurement, production and administrative activities, corporations have turned to quantitative modeling of their supply chains to address these issues. Based on the data of a heavy machinery manufacturer headquartered in the US, this research introduces a robust model for the deployment of strategic inventory buffers across a multi-echelon manufacturing system. Specifically, this study establishes a replenishment policy for inventory using a multiple bin, or Kanban, system for each part number in the assembly of products from our sponsors tractor line. We employ a numerical simulation to evaluate and optimize the various inventory deployment scenarios. Utilizing several thousand runs of the simulation, we derive a generalized treatment for each part number based on an econometric function of the parameters associated with lead-time, order frequency, inventory value and order costing. The pilot for the simulation focuses on the parts data for three earthmoving products across eight echelons, but scales to n products across m echelons. Our results show that this approach predicted the optimal quantities of Kanbans for 95% of parts to a level of accuracy +/- 3 bins.by Philip J. Hodge and Joshua D. Lemaitre.M.Eng.in Logistic
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