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

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

Tactical production planning in a hybrid Make-to-Stock-Make-to-Order environment under supply, process and demand uncertainties: a robust optimisation model

In this paper, we consider a hybrid Make-to-Stock-Make-to-Order environment to develop a novel optimisation model for medium-term production planning of a typical multi-product firm based on the competencies of the robust optimisation methodology. Three types of uncertainties: Suppliers, processes and customers, are incorporated into the model to construct a robust practical model in an uncertain business environment. The modelling procedure is started with applying deterministic linear programming to develop a new multi-objective approach for the combination of multi-product multi-period production planning and aggregate production planning problems. Then, the proposed deterministic model is transformed into a robust optimisation framework and the solution procedure is designed according to the Lp-Metric methodology. Next, using the IBM ILOG CPLEX optimisation software, the proposed model is evaluated by applying the data collected from an industrial case study. Final results illustrate the applicability of the proposed model