Car-sharing relocation strategies: a state of the art

Traditional car sharing systems are round-trip and require advance reservations. The advances of ICT and vehicle automation allow to improve car sharing sys-tems and to provide users with greater flexibility. As it concerns reservation, new car sharing systems offer users open-ended reservation and/or instant access. As it concerns the trip typology, new car sharing systems are multiple station shared vehicle systems (MSSVS). Roundtrips still occur in this type of system, however there is a large number of one-way trips made between the multiple stations. Operating an MSSVS is much more difficult than operating a round-trip shared vehicle systems. The problem is that the system can quickly become imbalanced with respect to the number of vehicles at the multiple stations. These systems are called new (or second) generation car sharing systems. Third generation systems are the last being developed; in these systems vehicles can be accessed at any point of the area. An overview of all these car sharing systems is provided in this paper

Automation of a garment sewing department assessment by smart simulation

The textile-garment industry needs great production flexibility to adapt, in terms of sustainability, to the fickle fashion market. This study proposes a new simulation model of manufacturing and production processes, which can be used as design support, performance evaluation and plant management of highly flexible production systems such as those operating in the fashion sector. The proposed simulation model aims to support industries in increasing their reactive flexibility by adjusting the production set-up. It is a distributed discrete event simulator based on the easy re-composition of resources in the production layout and on the availability of intelligent process management and control modules. The simulator has been applied to optimise the production of children’s garments. The development was done together with the production manager of an important European industry; the manager enjoyed the intuitive use of the software and the significance and reliability of the information obtained

On line shopping and logistics: a fast dynamic vehicle routing algorithm for dealing with information evolution

Online shopping has seen booms of orders in recent years. In online shopping, the orders are characterized by tight order-to-delivery lead times and the frequent and discrete arrival of orders. Online shopping has recently expanded into new sectors. Due to the pandemic, online grocery shopping showed a boom and the shift from physical grocery shopping to on line shopping is not expected to disappear with the pandemic end. This increases the number of online orders that should be delivered directly to customers. Online shopping is changing its characteristics: customers even more often pick up online orders in stores. This increases the number of online orders that need to be delivered to physical stores and places requirements on supply chains\u2014especially in terms of speed and efficiency. Delivery at the time and place that is convenient to the consumer is one of the main issues for increasing customer satisfaction and therefore business efficiency. This study proposes an exact algorithm for solving a multi-constrained dynamic vehicle routing problem with a short execution time. The algorithm is therefore able to satisfy customer preferences, allowing for instance last minute changes in order lists and/or delivery addresses

Cost-effective robots for mine detection in thick vegetation

The paper deals with design and modelling of four cost-effective crawling robots for land-mine localization in uneasy accessible areas covered by thick vegetation. As a universal solution to the land-mine problem is unlikely to be achieved in the short time, according to what many other researchers think, time is worth spent on trying to solve a specific aspect of the global problem, rather then treating the problem as a whole. Therefore, the reasons that leaded to recognize mine localization in areas covered by thick vegetation as important and urgent aspect of the global land-mine problem are explained. Then, what we mean with cost-effective robots is reported, within the establishment of simple criteria to evaluate the effective impact of proposed robots on the work of demining agencies on field. Finally, four cost-effective robots are presented

An optimization methodology for the consolidation of urban freight boxes

The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme. Packages are firstly delivered to urban distribution centers (UDCs) on the border of urban areas. Packages should therefore be delivered from the UDC to receivers within the urban area. Each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. FURBOT boxes are consolidated in the UDC with these packages. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a FURBOT vehicle. A virtual key and the actual address of the box will be communicated to all the receivers, allowing them to collect their packages from the box in a given time window. The paper concerns a methodology for the box consolidation which minimizes the overall distance travelled by receivers, taking into account the box capacity and the maximum walking distance the receivers accept to collect their packages. A fuzzy kmeans clustering algorithm has been adopted

The routing problem of an innovative urban freight distribution scheme

The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme, aimed at reducing the externalities connected with the freight delivery process. Both packages destined to commercial activities and to private consumers (e-commerce) are taken into account. Packages are firstly delivered to urban distribution centers (UDCs) on the border of urban areas; each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. FURBOT boxes are consolidated in the UDC with these packages. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a FURBOT vehicle. The FURBOT vehicle has a capacity of 2 boxes. The paper focuses on the problem of choosing the couple of boxes to be loaded on each vehicle and on the related choice of the route to be assigned to each vehicle: from the UDC to the first stop where the first box should be unloaded, to the second stop where the second box should be unloaded, and then back to the UDC. A methodology for the specific routing problem is proposed and its application to the case study of Genoa city centre is presented