Introducing the Concept of Hyperconnected Mobile Production

Many globalized businesses are trying to cope with growing competition by strategically expanding their dedicated network of production facilities so as to be able to offer and to deliver time and price competitive offers to their clients across the world. In this paper, exploiting Physical Internet principles, we introduce the concept of hyperconnected mobile production that can alternatively enable businesses to dynamically expand and contract as necessary their production capacity in regions worldwide. First, hyperconnected mobile production exploits open fabs from multiple parties readily available in those regions. Second, these fabs are to rely on plug-and-play production modules. These modules are to be flowed in and out of open fabs worldwide by the fab operators or their business clients so as to absorb dynamic production requirements from customers. Third, the production modules are to be dynamically re-configurable through adding and removing plug-and-play modular resources. We first show that hyperconnected mobile production builds on eight innovation threads: distributed, outsourced, on-demand, modular, additive, mobile, containerized and hyperconnected production. We then provide an overall description of key facets of the hyperconnected mobile production concept and finally elicit a number of promising research avenues

Transport Items and Physical Internet Handling Boxes: a Comparison Framework Across Supply Chains

Pallets, cardboard boxes, and plastic crates are widely used tools to operate supply chains. As such they have many impacts on handling effort, shipment protection, transport mean utilization as well as repositioning and recycling efforts and they represent billions of assets spread all over the world. The historical and local origins of the designs and the sharing among many stakeholders do not ensure at all any kind of global optimization. The purpose of this paper is to define and explain a research effort to better measure and evaluate the efficiencies and inefficiencies for supply chain stakeholders for themselves and globally. When validated the framework will be sued to evaluate new designs on a global scale especially for the design of the handling box related to the Physical Internet concept

Mapping Client Expectations for Better Business Design Innovation

This paper looks at the impacts of customer centricity (business models focused on understanding customer needs) and pull orientation (value chains whose output is dictated by end-user demand rather than producer capacity) on business design innovation in a new economy context. The key concepts are represented as client expectations. These are mapped over a business design framework, showing how they impact all aspects of the business in various ways. The result is a rich yet simple semantic network yielding relations, dependencies and synergies at a glance, based on the co-authors’ Tetrahedral Business Design Framework

Reducing Transport Miles Through the Use of Mobile Hubs: A Case Study in Local Food Supply Chains

Though environmentally friendly in many regards, local supply chains are often inefficient due to lack of proper infrastructure. This paper explores the use and placement of mobile hubs for consolidation and distribution of goods in local supply chains. Specifically, we look at local food supply chains where food typically travels from rural farms to suburban and urban restaurants. Currently, consolidation is minimal and not optimized in these supply chains. This paper computes suitability and location analysis through a novel multi-criterion scoring methodology utilizing kernel density and network analysis. The effectiveness of these mobile hubs is assessed through strategic routing, where the routes are optimized for time and distance. Results indicate that on average mobile hubs do in fact reduce mileage and number of stops, lessening emissions in addition to saving time and money. The proposed methodology can be implemented in other local supply chains to better consolidate and distribute goods

Refurburshing and Recycling Facilities Design Methodology

To design a facility, expected flows between the resources is one of the most important input. Flows are usually calculated given some statistics of previous periods or from the expected demand and the process required. However, in a refurbishing and recycling facility, flows are very fluctuating and not trivial to predict. The quantity produced by such facility not only depends on the demand but also on the supplies which are returned products under guaranty or discarded products after their end-of-use. The uncertainty and the variability on these supplies are often higher than the one on the demand which makes it even more complex to calculate the expected flows. This article contributes a methodology for designing such recycling and refurbishing facilities that are concurrently efficient and robust. It provides an empirical illustration of the methodology through a computer refurbishing and recycling facility case study

Grid Facilities Design: Dynamic Modular Deployment of Production, Handling and Storage Resources

To survive and thrive in a fast-moving environment, facilities must be designed to show adaptability, flexibility and robustness. As some facilities are depicted by heavy and sophisticated equipment costly and hard to displace, others are composed of moveable workstations with highly flexible workers. In most cases, the trade-off is between the cost of redeploying the resources and the excessive cost of material handling and storage incurred by an inefficient deployment of the resources. We propose a design strategy based on (1) conceiving and designing the facility as a stable grid of modules, (2) dynamically deploying production, storage and handling resources to these modules, and (3) dynamically assigning process-product combinations to the modules so as to meet stochastic and dynamically evolving product demand on a rolling planning horizon. We illustrate the strategy as applied to a computer refurbishing and recycling facility

Modular Design of Physical Internet Transport, Handling and Packaging Containers

This paper proposes a three‐tier characterization of Physical Internet containers into transport, handling and packaging containers. It first provides an overview of goods encapsulation in the Physical Internet and of the generic characteristics of Physical Internet containers. Then it proceeds with an analysis of the current goods encapsulation practices. This leads to the introduction of the three tiers, with explicit description and analysis of containers of each tier. The paper provides a synthesis of the proposed transformation of goods encapsulation and highlights key research and innovation opportunities and challenges for both industry and academia

Assessing Physical Internet potential for Humanitarian Supply Chains

Nowadays, Humanitarian Supply Chain stakes are changing drastically, implying a need for new methods and tools. One of the most promising evolution is definitively Physical Internet . The current research work investigates how to assess the potential benefits and limits of using the Physical Internet paradigm within Humanitarian Supply Chains. Practically, the proposal provides (i) a systems engineering-oriented framework and (ii) a set of specific modeling features. This contribution will allow assessing efficiently and accurately, impacts of Physical Internet in Humanitarian context. Finally, the paper develops avenues for further research based on the proposal

Functional Design of Physical Internet Facilities: A Road-rail Hub

As part of the 2010 IMHRC, Montreuil, Meller and Ballot enumerated the type of facilities that would be necessary to operate a Physical Internet (PI, π), which they termed, “π-nodes.” This paper is part of a three-paper series for the 2012 IMHRC where the authors provide functional designs of three PI facilities. This paper covers a PI road-rail hub. The purpose of a PI road-rail node is to enable the transfer of PI containers from their inbound to outbound destinations. Therefore, a road-rail π-hub provides a mechanism to transfer π-containers from a train to another one or a truck or from a truck to a train. The objective of the paper is to provide a design that is feasible to meet the objectives of this type of facility, identify ways to measure the performance of the design, and to identify research models that would assist in the design of such facilities. The functional design is presented in sufficient detail as to provide an engineer a proof of concept