On the drivers of demand for innovative freight transportation services

Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving more integrated, efficient, and sustainable services in the global market. While much attention is going to how contemporary innovations, including technology-enabled and management innovations, change the supply of services, little work is done on depicting their changing relationship with freight transportation demand. We present findings from a comprehensive study among Global Fortune 500 companies aimed at understanding what drives the demand for modern transportation services. We investigate the importance of three key service attributes that are growing in importance, i.e., operational control of transport mode, service flexibility and ancillary value-added services. We measure the influence of contextual factors on the choice of service, including supply chain strategy, demand volatility, internal flexibility and industry type. This leads to recommendations for shippers on how they can adjust their supply chains in the future to benefit from new freight services. Our findings also stress the need for the logistics industry to adopt modern service choice approaches

Optimizing make-to-stock policies through a robust lot-sizing model

In this paper we consider a practical lot-sizing problem faced by an industrial company. The company plans the production for a set of products following a Make-To-Order policy. When the productive capacity is not fully used, the remaining capacity is devoted to the production of those products whose orders are typically quite below the established minimum production level. For these products the company follows a Make-To-Stock (MTS) policy since part of the production is to fulfill future estimated orders. This yields a particular lot-sizing problem aiming to decide which products should be produced and the corresponding batch sizes. These lot-sizing problems typically face uncertain demands, which we address here through the lens of robust optimization. First we provide a mixed integer formulation assuming the future demands are deterministic and we tighten the model with valid inequalities. Then, in order to account for uncertainty of the demands, we propose a robust approach where demands are assumed to belong to given intervals and the number of deviations to the nominal estimated value is limited. As the number of products can be large and some instances may not be solved to optimality, we propose two heuristics. Computational tests are conducted on a set of instances generated from real data provided by our industrial partner. The heuristics proposed are fast and provide good quality solutions for the tested instances. Moreover, since they are based on the mathematical model and use simple strategies to reduce the instances size, these heuristics could be extended to solve other multi-item lot-sizing problems where demands are uncertain.publishe

On the Demand for Flexible and Responsive Freight Transportation Services

Several innovations during the last decades have impacted freight transportation as one of the major drivers of global economic development. Both demand and supply of freight transportation services have been transformed through major recent logistics’ innovations such as globalization dynamics, freight network integration, mass-individualized logistics services, digitalization and advanced transportation technologies. Changes in the service deployment of logistics service providers (LSPs) will ultimately transform characteristics of their logistics service packages resulting in the emergence of new service features for their customers i.e., shipper firms. These new features not only influence business operations of the customer firms directly or indirectly, but also change shipper firms’ expectations in the long run. While a deep understanding of customers’ needs is one of the key factors to sustain competitive advantage of firms, in freight transportation less attention is being paid to understand beforehand whether an innovation is appreciated and will be utilized by customers. The innovations in freight transportation services are offering shippers new choices and service offerings which claim big advantages for shippers. However, no one has yet tried to measure these advantages. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult for LSPs to compose multi-dimensional service packages and to set prices in the market. Fulfilling this practical need requires a major research effort, to formulate and empirically model the demand for these services....Transport and Logistic

Effects of using Aquasorb Polymer on irrigation of Pinus eldarica, Olea europea and Atriplex canescens

This experiment was carried out in 2001 in order to determine the effect of aquasorb polymer on irrigation of three plant species in Hossein Abad Station of Sand Stabilization of Qom province. The Factorial statistical method under Randomized compete blocks design whit three replicates was used. There were two Factors: species (Atriplex canescens, Pinus eldarica Medw. and Olea europea L.) and Aquasorb polymer (0.0%, 2.0%, 4.0% with irrigation interval three times were than normal interval) and control irrigation with normal interval). The variables were: Soil water content (%) before and after irrigation (at depths of 25 and 50 cm) and survival % one, three and six months after plating. The ANOVA and Duncan tests were used to analyze the data. The results showed that there were significant differences (

Healthcare system simulation using witness

Simulation techniques have a proven track record in manufacturing industry as well as other areas such as healthcare system improvement. In this study, simulation model of a health center in Malaysia is developed through the application of WITNESS simulation software which has shown its flexibility and capability in manufacturing industry. Modelling procedure is started through process mapping and data collection and continued with model development, verification, validation and experimentation. At the end, final results and possible future improvements are demonstrated

An Investigation of Direct Hydrocarbon (Propane) Fuel Cell Performance Using Mathematical Modeling

An improved mathematical model was used to extend polarization curves for direct propane fuel cells (DPFCs) to larger current densities than could be obtained with any of the previous models. DPFC performance was then evaluated using eleven different variables. The variables related to transport phenomena had little effect on DPFC polarization curves. The variables that had the greatest influence on DPFC polarization curves were all related to reaction rate phenomena. Reaction rate phenomena were dominant over the entire DPFC polarization curve up to 100 mA/cm2, which is a value that approaches the limiting current densities of DPFCs. Previously it was known that DPFCs are much different than hydrogen proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). This is the first work to show the reason for that difference. Reaction rate phenomena are dominant in DPFCs up to the limiting current density. In contrast the dominant phenomenon in hydrogen PEMFCs changes from reaction rate phenomena to proton migration through the electrolyte and to gas diffusion at the cathode as the current density increases up to the limiting current density

On the drivers of demand for innovative freight transportation services

Contemporary innovations in freight transportation and logistics are instrumental in achieving more integrated, efficient, and sustainable services in the global market. While much attention is going to how contemporary innovations, including technology-enabled and management innovations, change the supply of services, little work is done on depicting their changing relationship with freight transportation demand. We present findings from a comprehensive study among Global Fortune 500 companies aimed at understanding what drives the demand for modern transportation services. We investigate the importance of three key service attributes that are growing in importance, i.e., operational control of transport mode, service flexibility and ancillary value-added services. We measure the influence of contextual factors on the choice of service, including supply chain strategy, demand volatility, internal flexibility and industry type. This leads to recommendations for shippers on how they can adjust their supply chains in the future to benefit from new freight services. Our findings also stress the need for the logistics industry to adopt modern service choice approaches.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and Logistic