On the role of trust types and levels on inventory replenishment decision

Using a participatory simulation platform, this paper investigates the inventory replenishment decisions made under different trust categories. Depending on the type of trust (trust in supplier versus trust in customer) and level of trust (high versus low), each decision is categorized and analyzed. We investigate how the inventory manager`s ordering behavior varies regarding their type and level of trust. This study provides evidence for the role of trust in inventory replenishment decision. The findings on the influence of trust on inventory decision indicators provide a new perspective in respect to the supply chain management literature, which generally postulates a positive influence of trust on supply chain stability and uncertainty reduction

The dial-a-ride problem with electric vehicles and battery swapping stations

The Dial-a-Ride Problem (DARP) consists of designing vehicle routes and schedules for customers with special needs and/or disabilities. The DARP with Electric Vehicles and battery swapping stations (DARP-EV) concerns scheduling a fleet of EVs to serve a set of pre-specified transport requests during a certain planning horizon. In addition, EVs can be recharged by swapping their batteries with charged ones from any battery-swap stations. We propose three enhanced Evolutionary Variable Neighborhood Search (EVO-VNS) algorithms to solve the DARP-EV. Extensive computational experiments highlight the relevance of the problem and confirm the efficiency of the proposed EVO-VNS algorithms in producing high quality solutions

Big data Empowered Logistics Services Platform

Logistics section is one of the most important industrial sections to contribute to European economy. To improving efficiency and energy efficient of logistics, European Commission call new research theme ‘smart, green and integrated transport’ in its H2020 program. The paper presents a version on providing a cloud based platform for supporting big data empowered logistics services to respond this call. The research is supported by inter-disciplinary approaches, which brings experts from telecommunication, cloud computing, sensor networking, service-oriented computing, data analysis, transportation, and logistics areas to work together to provide real-world solutions for future logistics. The research questions and challenges of the platform are highlighted. Overall architecture and data collection are presented

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

© 2016 Taylor & Francis. Growing interest on business collaboration motivates todays industries, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical business networks to respond to market opportunities with added business benefits. This business environment requires concurrent work and real-time information sharing between key business partners in order to design and develop customised products. The use of traditional communication media such as e-mail, phone and fax is not satisfactory to get real-time information and is time-consuming and most often ineffective. In such environments, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Web-based technology supports real-time information sharing among networked SMEs for the collaborative design and manufacturing of customised products. This study proposes an innovative ICT platform supporting SMEs collaboration, through Web and the Internet of Things technologies, which follows the Net-Challenge conceptual approach and methodological guidelines for SMEs to form and operate virtual organisations for the collaborative development and delivery of customised products. The ICT Platform was assessed in three different industry domains, namely the textile and apparel, the footwear and the machine tools, respectively. This ICT solution promotes collaboration, with substantial advantages for SMEs including the reduction of costs and delivery time and improvement of the innovation potential

Fit between humanitarian professionals and project requirements: hybrid group decision procedure to reduce uncertainty in decision-making

Choosing the right professional that has to meet indeterminate requirements is a critical aspect in humanitarian development and implementation projects. This paper proposes a hybrid evaluation methodology for some non-governmental organizations enabling them to select the most competent expert who can properly and adequately develop and implement humanitarian projects. This methodology accommodates various stakeholders’ perspectives in satisfying the unique requirements of humanitarian projects that are capable of handling a range of uncertain issues from both stakeholders and project requirements. The criteria weights are calculated using a two-step multi-criteria decision-making method: (1) Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process for the evaluation of the decision maker weights coupled with (2) Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank the alternatives which provide the ability to take into account both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Sensitivity analysis have been developed and discussed by means of a real case of expert selection problem for a non-profit organisation. The results show that the approach allows a decrease in the uncertainty associated with decision-making, which proves that the approach provides robust solutions in terms of sensitivity analysis

Influence of transition metal doping (Fe, Co, Ni and Cr) on magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 manganites

International audienc

Effects of partial Mn-substitution on magnetic and magnetocaloric properties in Pr0.7Ca0.3Mn0.95X0.05O3 (Cr, Ni, Co and Fe) manganites

International audienc