An Algorithm for the Multiattribute, Multicommodity Flow Problem with Freight Consolidation and Inventory Costs

Supply Chain Design Considering Economies of Scale and Transport Frequencies

Joint managed inventory is an advanced supply chain inventory management tool, which will effectively tackle the complicated problem between the inventory cost of supply chain and service level. The research on inventory model and its’ control under JMI environment is a hot issue at present. In this paper, the authors deeply discuss the question of the inventory time costs about the multi-product and multi-echelon control model and its’ replenishment strategy under JMI environment. With considering the foundation of JMI and time cost, the authors propose the multi-product multi-echelon inventory cost control model under time cost. Then formulate corresponding replenishment strategy. At last, through a numerical example, the authors discover that the multi-product multi-echelon joint inventory management based on time cost can effectively reduce the total inventory costs and improve the competitiveness of the entire supply chain.

Integrated transport systems are a perfect form of transportation organization, because they allow integrated use of competing modes of transport, providing a high level of transportation service at affordable prices and savings in transportation costs. With the increasing demand for such transportation, the issue of transport safety assessment is becoming more important, particularly in preservation of cargo and vehicles in each section of the transportation process. In the process of technical progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve a high enough level of transport safety, which allows to ensure national security and interests in the field of transport activities. Unfortunately, transport safety management today is mainly carried out at organizational level, which needs to be supplemented with safety assessment of transport system’s objects. The development of methods for transport safety assessment remains a complex scientific task, the solving of which depends on the economic efficiency and safety of the transportation process. Since transport safety is the state of the transport system, its assessment includes the safety assessments of various transport infrastructures. Thus, there is some imaginary protection field of the object of transport infrastructure, which provides counteraction to a set of existing or perceived threats. The proposed algorithm for safe freight transportation routes development may be divided into two cyclical stages: optimal transport hub determination from the alternatives; optimal transportation route choosing between selected transport hubs. The method provides a comprehensive and rational framework for structuring a decision problem, for representing and quantifying its elements, for relating those elements to overall goals, and for evaluating alternative solutions. The practical use of the proposed approach allows at the designing stage of multimodal transportation routes to evaluate their alternatives, according to the selected criteria and take the necessary measures in order to improve transport safety.

The use of additive manufacturing has increased significantly in previous years. Additive manufacturing is used by multiple industry subsectors, including motor vehicles, aerospace, machinery, electronics, and medical products. Currently, however, additive manufactured products represent less than one percent of all manufactured products in the U.S. As the costs of additive manufacturing systems decrease, this technology may change the way that consumers interact with producers. Additive manufacturing technology opens up new opportunities for the economy and society. It can facilitate the customized production of strong light-weight products and it allows designs that were not possible with previous manufacturing techniques. Various challenges, however, can impede and slow the adoption of this technology. In many instances, the cost of producing a product using additive manufacturing processes exceeds that of traditional methods. This report examines literature on the costs of additive manufacturing and seeks to identify those instances where additive manufacturing might be cost effective and also identify potential means for reducing costs when using this technology. Current research on additive manufacturing costs reveals that this technology is cost effective for manufacturing small batches with continued centralized manufacturing; however, with increased automation distributed production may become cost effective. Due to the complexities of measuring additive manufacturing costs, current studies are limited in their scope. Many of the current studies examine the production of single parts. Those that examine assemblies tend not to examine supply chain effects such as inventory and transportation costs along with decreased risk to supply disruption. Currently, research also reveals that material costs constitute a major proportion of the cost of a product produced using additive manufacturing. However, technologies can often be complementary, where two technologies are adopted alongside each other and the benefits are greater than if they were adopted individually. Increasing adoption of additive manufacturing may lead to a reduction in raw material cost through economies of scale. The reduced cost in raw material might then propagate further adoption of additive manufacturing. There may also be economies of scale in raw material costs if particular materials become more common rather than a plethora of different materials. The additive manufacturing system is also a significant cost factor; however, this cost has continually decreased. Between 2001 and 2011 the average price decreased 51 % after adjusting for inflation.

Sterilization network design

In a vendor-managed inventory system, the supplier rents a third party provider’s warehouse which is close to its buyer and the buyer shares the demand forecast information with the supplier. However, the relationship between inventory cost and service level is a trade-off problem. In this study, we propose a forecast forward replenishment (FFR) strategy to improve the performance of the warehouse management regarding inventory cost and service level. A simulation study is conducted to compare our proposed FFR strategy with other strategies, such as re-order point (ROP) and material requirement planning (MRP) under different combinations of demand pattern and distribution lead time. The results show that the FFR strategy outperforms the ROP and MRP strategies. A real data set is used to demonstrate the application of our proposed method. The FFR strategy yields lower inventory cost with a certain service level.

Rapidly rising populations and likely increases in incomes in sub-Saharan Africa make tens of millions of hectares of cropland expansion nearly inevitable, even with large increases in crop yields. Much of that expansion is likely to occur in higher rainfall savannas, with substantial costs to biodiversity and carbon storage. Zambia presents an acute example of this challenge, with an expected tripling of population by 2050, good potential to expand maize and soya bean production, and large areas of relatively undisturbed miombo woodland and associated habitat types of high biodiversity value. Here, we present a new model designed to explore the potential for targeting agricultural expansion in ways that achieve quantitatively optimal trade-offs between competing economic and environmental objectives: total converted land area (the reciprocal of potential yield); carbon loss, biodiversity loss and transportation costs. To allow different interests to find potential compromises, users can apply varying weights to examine the effects of their subjective preferences on the spatial allocation of new cropland and its costs. We find that small compromises from the objective to convert the highest yielding areas permit large savings in transportation costs, and the carbon and biodiversity impacts resulting from savannah conversion. For example, transferring just 30% of weight from a yield-maximizing objective equally between carbon and biodiversity protection objectives would increase total cropland area by just 2.7%, but result in avoided costs of 27-47% for carbon, biodiversity and transportation. Compromise solutions tend to focus agricultural expansion along existing transportation corridors and in already disturbed areas. Used appropriately, this type of model could help countries find agricultural expansion alternatives and related infrastructure and land use policies that help achieve production targets while helping to conserve Africa's rapidly transforming savannahs.This article is part of the themed issue 'Tropical grassy biomes: linking ecology, human use and conservation'.

Supply chain network design with direct and indirect production costs: Hybrid gradient and local search based heuristics

The recent financial crisis has had a major negative impact on the global economy, and particularly had a significant impact on the global manufacturing industry due to the ever-decreasing customer demand. For manufacturing enterprises, especially those who run businesses in multiple countries, it is now a good time to operate in a smarter way and lead the new era that is taking shape underneath the present crisis. We introduce a multi-agent-based simulation tool in this chapter, with a description of the overall architecture, modelling elements, operational policies, etc. The tool has been used in a commercial project with a leading high-tech manufacturer. The complex relationships between service levels, inventory cost, transportation cost, and forecasting accuracy were well studied. The project results show that networked enterprises can really get better insight from such a quantitative analysis and would be able to identify solid opportunities for cost saving and performance improvement.

In any organization, especially in industry, supply chain planning is essential not only for proper work organization, but also for achieving strategic business objectives, such as profitability, customer satisfaction, and cost competitiveness. This task is not always simple for those in charge of planning and production control, since the main challenge they face is adapting the plans to the particular situation of each company. In this paper is presented the design of a production planning system for a production line of a paint industry, with a simple and effective model for forecasting sales and managing inventories, in order to adequately meet the expected demand but with reduced inventory levels. The results obtained through the validation of the production planning and control system designed in this study show an increase in annual turnover and savings in inventory maintenance costs. These optimizations also imply a significant reduction in sales losses due to stock breaks, loss of materials due to packaging waste, and costs of reprocessing products due to obsolescence and other damages caused by excess storage. Finally, an additional contribution that results from this production plan is the obtaining of the total bill of materials for the manufacture of the products, facilitating the management of the company’s purchases.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 worldwide pandemic enabled the expanded use of telemedical technologies in many areas of medicine. Remote consultations helped conserve medical resources and reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 while preserving patients access to medical care. In addition, telemedicine played a role in caring for patients who live in remote regions. Other benefits include savings in transportation costs and travel time both for patients and caregivers. Telemedicine, together with remote health monitoring technologies, has high potential in developing a preventive healthcare system and increasing the accessibility of medical care and meets current challenges by improving healthcare quality and providing an individual approach to patients. In 2020, the Center of Telemedicine was created in the Republican Clinical Oncological Dispensary (RCOD) to organize and improve telemedical assistance to the population of the Republic of Bashkortostan in the oncology profile.
 AIM: To analyze telemedical consultations (TMCs) on oncology in the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period of 20202022.
 METHODS: Quantitative count and comparison of the TMCs conducted by the RCOD of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 20202022 and sent to the National Medical Research Center (NMRC) were performed. The work on referrals to the NMRC for revision of examination results (computer tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography/computed tomography, and histological examinations), obtaining a second opinion, and determining treatment tactics was organized.
 RESULTS: In 2020, 32,076 TMCs were conducted, while 225 TMCs were performed with the NMRC. In 2021, the RCOD conducted 52,139 TMCs (a 62% increase compared to 2020), whereas 473 TMCs took place in the NMRC (a 110% increase compared to 2020). During the 12 months of 2022, 57,456 TMCs were performed by RCOD staff (a 10% increase over the previous year), and 672 TMCs were conducted with the NMRC (a 42% increase compared to 2021). For feedback from referring medical organizations and monitoring and evaluating the quality of regional TMCs, conference calls were held with the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Bashkortostan, chief physicians, and oncologists of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
 CONCLUSIONS: TMCs allow for the rapid exchange of medical information, thereby reducing the time of diagnosis and timely prescription of treatment, the implementation of timely routing of patients and improving the quality and availability of medical care in the oncology profile in the Republic of Bashkortostan. The annual increase in the number of TMCs is due to the growing need for this type of specialized medical care in this profile.

The double traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks involves the transportation of goods between two regions. In one region, a vehicle carrying a container visits customers, where pallets of goods are loaded into the container. The container is then shipped to a different region, where another vehicle visits another set of customers where the pallets are unloaded. Pallets are loaded in several rows inside the container, where each row follows the last-in-first-out principle. The standard test instances for the double traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks implies the use of a 45-foot pallet wide container to carry EUR-1 pallets. This paper investigates the effect on transportation costs if an open side container could be used when transporting the pallets. Computational experiments show savings in transportation costs of up to 20%. Moreover, by using a container loaded from the side, rather than from the rear, the defining attributes of the double traveling salesman problem seem to be lost.

The economic impact of alternative rail pricing schemes for export wheat

Traditional explanations for indirect trade through an entrepôt focus on savings in transport costs and the role of specialized agents in processing and distribution. We provide an alternative perspective based on the potential for entrepôts to facilitate tariff evasion. Using data on direct exports to mainland China and indirect exports via Hong Kong SAR, we find that the indirect export rate rises with the Chinese tariff rate, despite the absence of any legal tax advantage to sending goods via Hong Kong SAR. We present several robustness tests to rule out plausible alternative hypotheses based on existing explanations for entrepôt trade.

Location-allocation models as decision aids in delineating administrative regions