Assortment Planning of Automotive Products: Considerations for Economic and Environmental Impacts of Technology Selection

A manufacturer’s assortment is the set of products that the company offers to its customers. Assortment planning considerably affects both the sales revenue and product offering costs for the company and it had experienced growing attention across different industries over recent decades. In this study, we propose a modeling framework that seeks to identify the optimal assortment for a manufacturer of configurable products (in particular, automobiles). Our model accounts for environmental considerations (Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements, tail-pipe emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions related to the production of the fuel used to power the vehicle) during assortment planning. We formulate the economic and environmental requirements in the model through a mixed-integer programming framework and present a hypothetical product case study motivated by an American automaker that involves 120 potential configurations employing different engine technologies (gasoline, diesel, and hybrid technologies). Notwithstanding consideration for consumer perceptions and acceptance, the results of this research work show that diesel technologies are a better choice to satisfy average fuel economy requirements compared to hybrid and conventional powertrains with current technology maturity

15-08 Community-Aware Charging Station Network Design for Electrified Vehicles in Urban Areas: \u3c/i\u3e Reducing Congestion, Emissions, Improving Accessibility, and Promoting Walking, Bicycling, and use of Public Transportation\u3c/i\u3e

A major challenge for achieving large-scale adoption of EVs is an accessible infrastructure for the communities. The societal benefits of large-scale adoption of EVs cannot be realized without adequate deployment of publicly accessible charging stations due to mutual dependence of EV sales and public infrastructure deployment. Such infrastructure deployment also presents a number of unique opportunities for promoting livability while helping to reduce the negative side-effects of transportation (e.g., congestion, emissions, and noise pollution). In this phase, we develop a modeling framework (MF) to consider various factors and their associated uncertainties for an optimal network design for electrified vehicles. The factors considered in the study include: state of charge, dwell time, Origin-Destination (OD) pair

17-07 Phase-II: Community-Aware Charging Station Network Design for Electrified Vehicles in Urban Areas: \u3c/i\u3e Reducing Congestion, Emissions, Improving Accessibility, and Promoting Walking, Bicycling, and use of Public Transportation

A major challenge for achieving large-scale adoption of EVs is an accessible infrastructure for the communities. The societal benefits of large-scale adoption of EVs cannot be realized without adequate deployment of publicly accessible charging stations due to mutual dependence of EV sales and public infrastructure deployment. Such infrastructure deployment also presents a number of unique opportunities for promoting livability while helping to reduce the negative side-effects of transportation (e.g., congestion, emissions, and noise pollution). In this phase, we develop a modeling framework (MF) to consider various factors and their associated uncertainties for an optimal network design for electrified vehicles. The factors considered in the study include: state of charge, dwell time, Origin-Destination (OD) pair

MASCF: A Generic Process-centered Methodological Framework for Analysis and Design of Multi-agent Supply Chain Systems

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are becoming popular for modeling complex systems such as supply chains. However, development of multi-agent systems remain quite involved and extremely time consuming. Currently, there exist no generic methodologies for modeling supply chains using multi-agent systems. In this research, we propose a generic process-centered methodological framework, Multi-Agent Supply Chain Framework (MASCF), to simplify MAS development for supply chain (SC) applications. MASCF introduces the notion of process-centered organization metaphor, and creatively adopts Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model to a well-structured generic MAS analysis and design methodology, Gaia, for multi-agent supply chain system (MASCS) development. The popular Tamagotchi case was designed and analyzed using MASCF. The validity of the framework was established by implementing MASCF output of Tamagotchi SC using the Java Agent DEvelopment Framework (JADE)