Transportation Research: Part E logo
Paper

Design and evaluation of a multi-trip delivery model with truck and drones

Publication Date
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...
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Presentation

Webinar: Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience - Research Briefing

Publication Date
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...
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Report

Closing the Loop - Toward a Circular Supply Chain

Publication Date

The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry, non-profits, and academia to discuss circular supply chains during the December 2019 roundtable.

 

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Transportation Research Part A Logo
Paper

Characterizing urban last-mile distribution strategies in mature and emerging e-commerce markets

Publication Date
E-retailers and other companies participating in the e-commerce supply chain are developing a variety of strategies for last-mile e-commerce distribution in urban areas. These strategies must account for a number of elements of local context which can be particularly challenging in emerging markets. Urban last-mile distribution strategies that are specifically...
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Working Paper

Elephants or Goldfish?: An Empirical Analysis of Carrier Reciprocity in Dynamic Freight Markets

Publication Date
Dynamic macroeconomic conditions and non-binding truckload freight contracts enable both shippers and carriers to behave opportunistically. We present an empirical analysis of carrier reciprocity in the US truckload transportation sector to demonstrate whether consistent performance and fair pricing by shippers when markets are in their favor result in maintained primary...
CTL Globe
Report

Data Management: Preparing for Machine Learning

Publication Date

On October 15–16, 2019, the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics hosted representatives from 18 organizations for a roundtable on data management for machine learning in the supply chain. Six sessions focused on: 1) the importance of data, 2) managing organizational transformation, 3) organizational data governance, 4) data collection, 5) data wrangling, and 6) data visualization. Each session began with a short presentation followed by wide-ranging discussions. To encourage candor, statements have not been attributed to named organizations. 

CTL Globe
Paper

Revenue management in last-mile delivery: state-of-the-art and future research directions

Publication Date
This paper explores future avenues of research for revenue management in last-mile delivery. First, we review earlier efforts in this field, which have focused primarily on the problem of attended home deliveries (AHD) of groceries. Second, based on a topological classification of last-mile delivery characteristics, we identify relevant extensions inspired...
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Paper

Integrating first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery on shared vehicle routes for efficient urban e-commerce distribution

Publication Date
In this paper, we analyze the route efficiency trade-offs that emerge from combining first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery operations in an urban distribution system. We build on the extant literature on continuum approximation of optimal route distances and propose adjustment factors that account for the effects of integrated pickup and...
CTL Globe
Paper

Route learning: a machine learning-based approach to infer constrained customers in delivery routes

Publication Date
The availability of increasingly large data sets in the context of supply chain and logistics creates opportunities to streamline operations leveraging machine learning methods. In this study, we apply such methods to a well-studied problem in transportation and logistics: routing optimization. Route planning technologies that build on routing optimization methods...
CTL Globe
Working Paper

Corporate Supply Chain Disclosures and Factors Determining the Disclosure Approaches: A Palm Oil Case Study

Publication Date
Palm oil is one of four big commodities contributing to rapid deforestation. Companies face stakeholder pressure to produce and source palm oil sustainably and to disclose their commitments and actions. This study analyses companies' disclosures to understand the state of disclosure practice, identify typical disclosure profiles, examine the complementarity between...
CTL Globe
Report

Blockchain Applications in Supply Chain Management

Publication Date

Representatives from nine manufacturers, eight transportation companies, eight startups, a retailer, and an industry association joined experts from MIT for a highly interactive one-and-a-half-day roundtable on the use of blockchain technology in the supply chain. A variety of industries were represented, including healthcare, aerospace, food, mining, electronics, chemical, fashion, and logistics.

CTL Globe
Working Paper

Quantifying the Impact of Urban Road Networks on the Efficiency of Local Trips

Publication Date
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...
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Report

Designed to Deliver - Roundtable Report

Publication Date

The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) facilitated a series of roundtable discussions in conjunction with Uber Freight’s Deliver ‘19 conference. On September 4, 2019, more than 150 participants contributed to the discussion. The group was comprised mostly of shippers invited by Uber Freight and industry sponsors of CTL. Overall, the sessions focused on a better understanding of how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the relationships between shippers, carriers, receivers, drivers, and third parties.

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Paper

Summary Report for the Women in Supply Chain Summit: Achieving Balance in SCM

Publication Date
Summary Report for the Women in Supply Chain Summit: Achieving Balance in SCM held on March 26 - 27 2019 at MIT. This report is available for MIT CTL partners only. If you are an MIT CTL partner, please log in or create an account to download this paper. If...
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Thesis/Capstone

A Metaheuristic Approach to Optimizing a Multimodal Truck and Drone Delivery System

Publication Date
The success of e-commerce continues to push the bounds of delivery services as customers expect near instant fulfillment at little additional cost. This demand for delivery performance and operational cost efficiency has led to the exploration of the last-mile delivery problem using creative multimodal delivery systems. One promising system consists...
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Thesis/Capstone

Aggregate Production Planning for Engineer-to-Order Products

Publication Date
The contract manufacturing industry is growing and shifting from standard products to highly customized engineer-to-order (ETO) products. Different from standard products, ETO orders have more production process uncertainties because their design specifications and production process can be changed after the orders have been accepted. Such uncertainties increase production costs, the...
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Thesis/Capstone

Alternate Pricing Model for Transportation Contracts

Publication Date
Transportation spend is an increasingly relevant topic of concern for all manufacturing companies. Along with the money spent on transporting goods, service betterment has become an everyday expectation. In a tight market, when contract carriers are unable to fulfill the shipper’s demands, the shipments are tendered to the spot market...
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Thesis/Capstone

Analytics Driving Supply Chain Segmentation for Lenovo

Publication Date
Although segmentation strategies and their benefits are common topics in the academic literature, two realities contrast in the realm of supply chain management: While a vast number of companies still perceive operations as cost-centers, only a few have adopted profit-driver approaches. The second group embraced segmentation to deploy end-to-end supply...
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Thesis/Capstone

Assessing Feasibility of the Delivery Drone

Publication Date
Service level growth is hindered by declining activity from customers needing access to physical assets stored by the sponsor company. The delivery drone presents a viable option to support the initiative of maintaining service levels while reducing cost. To explore the feasibility of the delivery drone, a comprehensive review of...
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Thesis/Capstone

Behavioral Management Patterns: Small Firms’ Recipe for Growth

Publication Date
More than 99% of the companies in the world are micro, small, or medium size enterprises and account for ~70% of the jobs, on average, in OECD countries. However, due to a lack of productivity, among other factors, only a third of them survive beyond 42 months. This paper explores...
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Thesis/Capstone

Comparative Evaluation of Drone Delivery Systems in Last-Mile Delivery

Publication Date
With the latest technological advancement, the use of drones has emerged as an innovative and viable business solution for last-mile distribution. An efficient drone delivery system has to address the classic vehicle routing problem (VRP): "What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of drones to serve a...
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Thesis/Capstone

Comparison and Financial Assessment of Demand Forecasting Methodologies for Seasonal CPGs

Publication Date
Forecast accuracy is an ongoing challenge for made-to-stock companies. For highly seasonal fast-moving consumer packaged goods (CPGs) companies like King’s Hawaiian, an improved forecast accuracy can have significant financial benefits. Traditional time series forecasting methods are quick to build and simple to run, but with the proliferation of available data...
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Thesis/Capstone

Cost-benefit Analysis of a Blockchain-based Supply Chain Finance Solution

Publication Date
During the past few years, blockchain technology has shown great potential to disrupt existing supply chain finance solutions, as it could increase the efficiency of invoice processing and provide a more transparent and secure transactions. However, the costs and benefits of implementing blockchain technology in supply chain finance for involved...
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Thesis/Capstone

Decoupled Capacity with Powerloop

Publication Date
With the current imbalance of supply and demand of truck drivers in the U.S., improving driver utilization is critical to secure reliable freight transportation. The largest source of downtime for carriers is the time spent at shippers’ facilities during the unloading and loading process, during which carriers might be detained...
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Thesis/Capstone

Demand Forecasting and Inventory Management for Spare Parts

Publication Date
Spare parts management is an essential operation in the supply chain of many companies, owing to its strategic importance in supporting equipment availability and continuity of operations. In many supply chains, the demand of spare parts is inherently more uncertain compared to traditional fast-moving products. This is due to the...