Operational transportation planning of freight forwarding companies in horizontal coalitions

In order to improve profitability, freight forwarding companies try to organize their operational transportation planning systematically, considering not only their own fleet but also external resources. Such external resources include vehicles from closely related subcontractors in vertical cooperations, autonomous common carriers on the transportation market, and cooperating partners in horizontal coalitions. In this paper, the transportation planning process of forwarders is studied and the benefit of including external resources is analyzed. By introducing subcontracting, the conventional routing of own vehicles is extended to an integrated operational transportation planning, which simultaneously constructs fulfillment plans with overall lowest costs using the own fleet and subcontractors’ vehicles. This is then combined with planning strategies, which intend to increase the profitability by exchanging requests among members in horizontal coalitions. Computational results show considerable cost reductions using the proposed planning approach.     

A capacitated hub location problem in freight logistics multimodal networks

In this paper we deal with a capacitated hub location problem arising in a freight logistics context; in particular, we have the need of locating logistics platforms for containers travelling via road and rail. The problem is modelled on a weighed multimodal network. We give a mixed integer linear programming model for the problem, having the goal of minimizing the location and shipping costs. The proposed formulation presents some novel features for modelling capacity bounds that are given both for the candidate hub nodes and the arcs incident to them; further, the containerised origin-destination (\(o-d)\) demand can be split among several platforms and different travelling modes. Note that here the network is not fully connected and only one hub for each \(o-d\) pair is used, serving both to consolidate consignments on less transport connections and as reloading point for a modal change. Results of an extensive computational experimentation performed with randomly generated instances of different size and capacity values are reported. In the test bed designed to validate the proposed model all the instances up to 135 nodes and 20 candidate hubs are optimally solved in few seconds by the commercial solver CPLEX 12.5.     

The Plateau problem from the perspective of optimal transport

Both optimal transport and minimal surfaces have received much attention in recent years. We show that the methodology introduced by Kantorovich on the Monge problem can, surprisingly, be adapted to questions involving least area, e.g., Plateau-type problems as investigated by Federer.     

The information value of logistics platforms in a freight matching market

The information asymmetry in the freight matching of the long-haul trucking industry usually pushes shippers to join a logistics platform that has better knowledge of truckers’ cost information. A logistics platform that is plugged into a freight transportation system helps shippers overcome their information disadvantage but produces the double marginalization effect. We investigate the equilibrium characteristics of a shipper and logistics platform in the freight matching market and find that the shipper prefers to cooperate with the logistics platform in a small-scale sales market but searches for truckers by himself in a large-scale sales market. We show that the information value of a logistics platform for the freight system consists of two aspects: (i) employ low-cost truckers for the shipper and avoid the shipper’s inefficient expansion of the selling quantity in a moderate-scale sales market with greatly heterogeneous truckers, and (ii) improve both the total profit and social welfare of the freight system in a small-scale sales market. We further find that the shipper’s private information may hurt the logistics platform and the logistics platform can mitigate her double marginalization disadvantage by improving value-added services or lowering the logistics price in a large-scale market. Our findings provide guidelines for the shipper and logistics platform on how to choose the appropriate transportation strategy and employment strategy in different logistics markets.     

我国水路货运量短期预测模型

本文对我国逐月水路货运量进行了趋势、季节分析，并利用时间序列分析方法建立了简单、实用的短期预测模型。     

Real-time control of freight forwarder transportation networks by integrating multimodal transport chains

Western European freight forwarders are continually being forced to increase the efficiency of their transportation processes because of the liberalization and deregulation of the European transport market. This paper proposes a new real-time-oriented control approach in order to expand load consolidation, reduce empty vehicle trips, and handle dynamic disturbances. This approach integrates multimodal transportation and multiple transshipments for the first time. Thus, it enables the flexible generation and adaptation of transportation processes. In order to be able to handle occurring disturbances, an optimization procedure that adapts the transportation processes is continually applied. Vehicle breakdowns or deceleration of vehicles, traffic congestion, and street blockages are integrated as possible disturbance scenarios. At the same time, dynamically incoming transportation requests are also dealt with. Moreover, cooperative agreements between freight forwarders, which are gaining increasing importance, are integrated by mapping hubs and external services. The efficiency of the new real-time approach is validated by several computational experiments. In particular, the use of the entire execution time for plan adaptation as well as the integration of multiple transshipments has shown promising results.     

Disruption management in vehicle routing and scheduling for road freight transport: a review

Disruption management is an approach to the rescheduling of operations following an unanticipated event occurring that has been applied in a wide range of applications, including airline scheduling and project management. This review focusses on the use of disruption management in vehicle routing and scheduling applied to road freight distribution. The paper discusses the key features of disruption management and examines the relevant objectives and types of disruption that may occur in this context. Different formulations and solution methods are described. A set of relevant papers are summarised and classified according to the type of disruption addressed, the relevant objectives and the solution approach.     

Minimizing greenhouse gas emissions in intermodal freight transport: an application to rail service design

Freight transport has undesirable effects on the environment. The most prominent of these is greenhouse gas emissions. Intermodal freight transport, where freight is shipped from origin to destination by a sequence of at least two transportation modes, offers the possibility of shifting freight (either partially or in full) from one mode to another in the hope of reducing the greenhouse emissions by appropriately scheduling the services and routing the freight. Traditional planning methods for scheduling services in an intermodal transportation network usually focus on minimizing travel or time-related costs of transport. This article breaks away from such an approach by addressing the issue of incorporating environment-related costs (greenhouse gases, to be specific) into freight transportation planning and proposes an integer program in the form of a linear cost, multicommodity, capacitated network design formulation that minimizes the amount of greenhouse gas emissions of transportation activities. Computational results based on an application of the proposed approach on a real-life rail freight transportation network are presented.     

Nonlinear freight costs in the EOQ problem

This note gives a solution to a qualification of the standard EOQ problem in which freight costs are at least partially determined by the integer number of carloads required to fill the order. The model also applies to a broad class of problems in which there are multiple set-up costs.     

Rank formulae from the perspective of orthogonal projectors

For matrices F and G having the same number of rows and the orthogonal projectors P?=?FF ^? and Q?=?GG ^?, with F ^? and G ^? denoting the Moore–Penrose inverses of F and G, respectively, several formulae for ranks of various functions of F, G, P and Q are established. Besides a collection of original characterizations, many of which involve the ranks of F*G and (F?:?G) (which coincide with the ranks of PQ and P?+?Q, respectively), some properties known in the literature are reestablished in a generalized form. The variety of relationships considered shows that the approach utilized in the article, based on the partitioned representations of the projectors, provides a powerful tool of wide applicability.     

Entropy of freight transportation and price variation

This article examines possible relationships between network entropy of commodity flow and variation in unit price of freight transportation service. Entropy of seventy-five major commodity flows through the railroad network in the United States have been calculated using data available in the 1974 waybill sample; unit price of transportation service for various networks has been measured as cents per tonmile. The results of empirical analysis confirm that an inverse relationship exists between variation in unit price and network entropy of commodity flow. Commodities with high network entropy appear to exert forces towards a constant price and those commodities with lower entropy, providing greater marginal utility, appear to have a wide variation in unit price. These findings can be used in regulating pricing decisions in the transportation industry.     

Optimal control of road freight flows by route choice inducement: A case from Mexico

Contrasting with much of the research in freight transportation around the impacts to transport operators, this work focuses on the Road Planner providing the infrastructure. This viewpoint, seeking minimal repair costs and other payments generally conflicts with the carriers’ view, looking for the best hauling route.On a random utility frame, the user-planner interaction is modelled on a partially tolled road network, considering two types of costs: (a) lorries’ trip cost guiding the route choice, and affected by planners’ actions, and (b) planners’ road repair costs, depending on the traffic, the vehicles’ type and the control implementation. A Monte Carlo simulation bases the stochastic assignment on the network, determining optimal subsidies that divert traffic to tolled roads. On a portion of the Mexican Paved network optimal subsidies are found, increasing the toll roads’ use and reducing traffic on the non-charged roads, generally having weaker pavements and higher maintenance costs.     

Insights into the development of strategy from a complexity perspective

This paper provides an account of an ongoing project with an independent school in the UK. The project focuses on a strategy development intervention which, from the start, was systemic in orientation. The intention was to integrate simple systems concepts and approaches into the strategy development process to: address power relations in actively engaging a wide range of stakeholders with the school’s strategy-making process; generate a range of good ideas; and make the strategy-making process transparent in order to inspire stakeholder confidence in, and commitment to, it and its outcomes. This paper describes how seeking to meet these aims entailed a series of workshops during the course of which an awareness of the relevance, in our interpretation, of Complex Adaptive Systems concepts grew.     

从客户视角研究微型付款模式对企业绩效的影响

基于客户资产理论,从客户视角研究微型付款模式影响企业绩效的机制进行研究.采用问卷设计和数据收集方式,研究共回收有效问卷2260份.通过对这2260份有效问卷进行信度和效度检验、描述性统计分析、相关分析和多元回归分析,对关于微型付款模式影响企业绩效的假设进行实证,找出客户视角微型付款模式影响企业绩效的机制.