Humanitarian Logistics – the First Week

Decisions made on material flow during the first week of a natural disaster are critical for victims. Currently, decision makers appears to be making important choices based on experience and intuition with little or no support from quantitative approaches because they do not exist. This research proposes a paradigm and offers two supporting models that will assist decision makers regarding the routing of materials during the first week of a disaster. It explicitly includes information regarding the victims’ needs and the degree to which routes are available in a quantitative way that allows updating as information improves. The paradigm involves the use of information gap theory adapted to the this situation for deciding on the types of supplies to send and the Canadian traveler problem for making decisions on the routes to take

Forklift Routing in Warehouses Using Dual-Commands and Stackable Pallets

This research determines time optimal routes for loading and picking pallets that can be stacked on top of each other during transport in a manual warehouse that only contains full pallets and utilizes single deep storage. This research was motivated by the fact that we are seeing this situation on an ever increasing basis, particularly in warehouses that supply parts to automotive assembly. In practice, forklift drivers have developed strategies to take advantage of this opportunity but to our knowledge there is no literature that addresses this problem rigorously. The important features of this work are that a time based mathematical model is required because the time spent stacking and unstacking pallets can be significant and a modeling approach to including stacking had to be developed. The basic models are included here with examples and insights into future work required for applicability to a wider range of users

Intermodal Hubs in the Physical Internet

Distribution of finished goods is currently an effective but inefficient process that consumes significant quantities of fossil fuel to move empty assets. This results in increased costs that are passed to the consumer and unnecessarily increased carbon emissions. The Physical Internet (PI) is focused on shared logistics that could prove to be an important element of next-generation logistics systems. The idea is to store and transport goods in anonymous standard-sized containers so that transportation and warehousing can be efficiently shared by many companies including competitors. If implemented, this idea has the potential of dramatically increasing efficiency thereby reducing fuel consumption and decreasing costs as well as emissions. This paper focuses on one aspect of the PI, intermodal hubs. More importantly, the key difference between the PI hub as imagined in this research and a transhipment facility or breakbulk terminal is that the control is decentralized; hence, this research explores decentralized control of a PI hub through experiments using scenarios and heuristics in an effort to gain some understanding how design and operations impact performance