3,820 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Decision support for build-to-order supply chain management through multiobjective optimization
This paper aims to identify the gaps in decision-making support based on
multiobjective optimization for build-to-order supply chain management (BTOSCM).
To this end, it reviews the literature available on modelling build-to-order
supply chains (BTO-SC) with the focus on adopting multiobjective optimization
(MOO) techniques as a decision support tool. The literature has been classified based
on the nature of the decisions in different part of the supply chain, and the key
decision areas across a typical BTO-SC are discussed in detail. Available software
packages suitable for supporting decision making in BTO supply chains are also
identified and their related solutions are outlined. The gap between the modelling and
optimization techniques developed in the literature and the decision support needed in
practice are highlighted and future research directions to better exploit the decision
support capabilities of MOO are proposed
Integrated Planning in Hospitals: A Review
Efficient planning of scarce resources in hospitals is a challenging task for
which a large variety of Operations Research and Management Science approaches
have been developed since the 1950s. While efficient planning of single
resources such as operating rooms, beds, or specific types of staff can already
lead to enormous efficiency gains, integrated planning of several resources has
been shown to hold even greater potential, and a large number of integrated
planning approaches have been presented in the literature over the past
decades.
This paper provides the first literature review that focuses specifically on
the Operations Research and Management Science literature related to integrated
planning of different resources in hospitals. We collect the relevant
literature and analyze it regarding different aspects such as uncertainty
modeling and the use of real-life data. Several cross comparisons reveal
interesting insights concerning, e.g., relations between the modeling and
solution methods used and the practical implementation of the approaches
developed. Moreover, we provide a high-level taxonomy for classifying different
resource-focused integration approaches and point out gaps in the literature as
well as promising directions for future research
Integrating Fiscal Decentralization Reforms and the Challenge of Implementation
South Africa\u27s struggles with an ambitious and complex fiscal decentralization program are presented in detail in the first six chapters of this book. In this chapter, we summarize our key findings and turn to a discussion of the way forward with the assignment of powers and functions, the development of local sources of revenue, and the redesign of the intergovernmental transfer system. We give special emphasis to the interrelationships among the pieces of the fiscal decentralization system. We also briefly consider two dimensions of the system - development transfers to support capital investment and municipal borrowing powers - that are not discussed at length in the previous chapters
A Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Service Agreements
We consider a logistics service provider which arranges transportation services to customers with different service agreements. The most prominent feature of this service agreement is the time period in which these customers send their orders and want to retrieve delivery information. After customers place their orders, they require information about the driver and an early indication of the arrival times. At the moment, this information needs to be provided. The order information of other customers with a different service agreement that needs to be serviced in the same period might still be unknown. Ultimately all customers have to be planned, constrained by the information provided to the customers in the earlier stage. In this paper, we investigate how the logistic service provider plans its routes and communicates the driver and arrival time information in the phase where not all customers are known (stage 1). Once all customer orders are known (stage 2), the final routes can be determined, which adhere to the already communicated driver and arrival time information from stage 1, minimizing total routing cost. For this problem, an exact algorithm is presented. This problem is solved using a novel tractable branch-and-bound method and re-optimization in stage 2. Detailed results are presented, showing the improvements of using re-optimization. We show that integrating the planning of the customers with the different service agreements leads to significant cost savings compared to treating the customers separately (as is currently done by most logistics service providers).</p
Scheduling of nonconforming devices: the case of a company in the automotive sector
This article presents a project developed in a company’s quality department aiming at scheduling the nonconforming devices analysis’ process. The company faced a problem of low compliance with pre-established time requests, resulting in large fines paid to its customers of the automotive sector. In order to overcome this problem, scheduling tools were developed and tested, with the goal of minimizing the number of tardy tasks in identical parallel machines. The simulation of different scheduling rules allowed confirmation that the current prioritization rule is not the most effective one. Preliminary simulations were carried out using Lekin software [18], showing that other criteria promote better results. The use of a newly developed algorithm, combining two different criteria, resulted in a reduction of tardy tasks, thus decreasing tardiness fines paid to customers. Despite the preliminary status of present results, it is possible to foresee some improvements in the analysis process performance, by using decision making support tools based on scheduling algorithms. This way, a significant improvement on the number of analysis which fulfills the defined pre-requirements will be achieved.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
- …