The containerized ocean freight market has been very volatile due to overcapacity and several disruptive changes. As a global ocean freight forwarder, C.H. Robinson hopes to improve the predictability of the spot ocean freight rates, especially on the Transpacific Eastbound (TPEB) lanes which represent its largest trade volumes. Therefore, this...
The freight industry creates 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through shipping. If companies measure precisely, they can begin the benchmarking process toward improvement. The Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC) provides a current consolidated Framework for calculating carbon emissions for freight transportation. Uber Freight, a third party software platform...
This work studies the impact of innovative last mile delivery solutions on the amount of produced CO 2 emissions. An innovative last mile delivery solution is defined as a truck that carries a drone and together in tandem the truck and drone deliver parcels to the set of customers. The...
Product visibility in the medical device supply chain is a challenge for suppliers, distributors, and hospitals. The lack of visibility makes managing inventory complex, and it is made more difficult when businesses have a segregated distribution model. In this model, a surplus of systems collects inventory data at the supply...
The digital supply chain is rapidly evolving, putting greater pressure on suppliers to adopt to the dynamic demands of the buyers. This paper explores how supply chain complexities and buyer-supplier relationships as a complex adaptive system interact with an integrated and enacted external environment and drive the key supply chain...
Pilot Freight Services, traditionally a bulk cargo freight forwarder in the US, is in the process of expanding their business to provide last-mile delivery (LMD) services. This capstone project helps Pilot improve the performance of their LMD operations through higher visibility and elimination of efficiencies. First, an understanding of Pilot’s...
Rising inventory costs is an ongoing challenge for any firm. These costs are of special significance to retail firms like Coppel, whose inventory investments are typically high and margins are slim. Inventory risk pooling is a strategy that is often ignored but can help bring significant cost reduction without affecting...
Drones have the potential to be major players in the field of last-mile delivery, especially with the rise of e-commerce. However, they face several technological and regulatory restrictions for large-scale implementation. Combining drones with traditional ground delivery vehicles can bridge this gap while achieving significant improvements in distribution cost and...
In the manufacturing industry, short-term production planning and scheduling requires multiple trade-offs to account for service targets, capacity utilization, setup, on-time delivery, costs and profit. If many SKUs flow in the same production line, the challenge is how to plan and schedule in such a way that an optimal trade-off...
In Latin America, micro, small, and medium firms represent about 99% of businesses and more than 70% of employment, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Despite their number, these firms face a low survival rate: per the Small Business Administration, only 50% are still in business after...
The intrinsic competitive nature of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry have made it a priority for companies to maximize profitability by aggressive cost-cutting measures in the context of growing material cost, surging labor expenses and increasing demand for product customization. While exploring optimization opportunities in outbound logistics management, which...
Inventory visibility has been a primary concern for corporate supply chains for decades. Utilizing inventory location and time data is particularly important for pharmaceutical companies, as is the sponsor, that have an ethical and legal responsibility to protect consumers from risky pharmaceutical products in the market. Until recently, pharmaceutical companies...
The growing urban population over the past few years has created many challenges for last mile distribution, such as traffic congestion, pollution, and lack of parking space availability. With the advent of e-commerce industry, the volumes for last mile delivery are growing consistently. As firms struggle to provide competitive delivery...
In a commodity consumer product business, such as bottled water, the customer has the power. Therefore, the business incurs whatever cost necessary to meet demand. To reduce the cost of fulfilling demand and of stockout, businesses must thoughtfully set inventory safety stock levels to compensate for potential spikes in demand...
Achieving an accurate long-range forecast is a challenge many companies face due to the uncertainty in anticipating demand several years out. Since companies make strategic decisions based on these forecasts – such as long-term investments and supply and capacity planning – it is critical that the long-range forecast be as...
Spare parts demand forecasting is a key activity for asset intensive industries, but it is challenging due to the underlying demand characteristics. Demand is characterized by periods of zero demand arrivals; and the size of the order is variable with large, unexpected spikes. Schlumberger, an oil and gas service manufacturer...
Ocean freight forwarding on the China-to-U.S. lane is a key service that C.H. Robinson, the sponsoring company, offers to the firm’s international clients. The rates on that lane have experienced volatility in the past few years which led to uncertainties to the future pricing trend. A statistically predictive model that...
Trade policies of the late 2010 decade are characterized by a unique combination of severity, shorter lifespan, and greater frequency. Supply chain leaders within the oil and gas industry may not recognize the full range of responses they might take when responding to this new dynamic. This report will do...
Carbon offsets present a mechanism to leverage corporate sustainability commitments to fund fleet renewal programs, decommissioning aging trucks and replacing them with greener vehicles. This study evaluates the feasibility of this approach from a financial and logistical perspective. First, the demand for transport carbon offsets is forecasted using inputs from...
This paper proposes a mixed integer program (MIP) for the network design problem of a parcel carrier that manages online orders from omnichannel retailers. The network includes several types of facilities, such as city distribution centers, intermediary depots, parcel offices, as well as collect channel points, such as automated parcel...
City-level circuity factors have been introduced to quantify and compare the directness of vehicular travel across different cities. While these city-level factors help to improve the quality of distance approximation functions for city-wide vehicle movements, more granular factors are needed to obtain accurate shortest path distance approximations for last-mile transportation...
Urban last-mile distribution in emerging economies suffers from unique levels of operational complexity, largely due to the prevailing dominance of the highly fragmented traditional retail channel. To support companies in strategically designing efficient urban distribution networks in such uncertain market environments, we propose a large-scale stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model...
We present a mathematical formulation and a heuristic solution approach for the optimal planning of delivery routes in a multi-modal system combining truck and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operations. In this system, truck and UAV operations are synchronized, i.e., one or more UAVs travel on a truck, which serves as...
We extend the Traveling Repairman Problem (TRP) by assuming a single truck which can stop at customer locations and launch drones multiple times from each stop location to serve customers. The problem is mathematically modeled, several bound analyses are conducted to determine the maximum possible improvements in customer waiting times...
Resilient supply chains are crucial to maintaining the consistent delivery of goods and services to the American people. The modern economy has made supply chains more interconnected than ever, while also expanding both their range and fragility. In the third quarter of 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria revealed some...
