CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Should Shippers Be Afraid of Ghost Freight? An Empirical Analysis of a Customer Portfolio from TMC, a Div. of C.H. Robinson

Publication Date
Over the past several years, there has been severe market volatility in the truckload industry leading to cost increases and efficiency losses for shippers and carriers. Previous research has investigated the many factors that contribute to such market conditions. One topic that has yet to be analyzed is “ghost freight.”...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Supply chain segmentation in the apparel industry

Publication Date
The nature of the apparel industry is enigmatic. Customers want differentiated products and agility, yet apparel is mainly produced in low-income countries with long lead times to compete on cost. This mismatch leads to poor planning, simultaneous over- and understocking, resulting in markdowns and lost sales. Supply chain segmentation has...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Supply Chain Simulation for Production Strategy Evaluation

Publication Date
The Consumer Product Goods (CPG) industry such as the bottled water business is subject to bottlenecks, due in part to both product characteristics, stochastic nature of the demand of products, and customer lead time volatility. Nevertheless, CPG companies are expected to be able to serve customers that rely on their...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

The Impact of Trade Credits in Nanostore Distribution

Publication Date
In developing countries, small mom-and-pop grocery stores called nanostores are one of the main grocery market channels. Cash constraints are a severe issue that affects these small businesses, preventing them from buying enough inventory to meet client demand, and forcing them to reject orders from suppliers due to a lack...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

The Secret Recipe for Modeling Warehouse Throughput

Publication Date
Throughput is a critical performance metric for warehouse operations in the food industry. Accurate throughput estimations are necessary for effectively planning replenishments, inventory levels, and labor resources to meet the needs of customers. General Mills, who manages a large variety portfolio with different packaging, demand volatility, storage requirements, and outbound...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Tradeoffs in Strategic Capacity Planning Under Demand Uncertainty

Publication Date
Companies are often faced with the need to make supply chain investment decisions to support new product introductions while there is still significant uncertainty in the demand expectations. This situation forces tradeoffs in supply chain capacity investments versus the risk of lost sales. To address this tradeoff, we have proposed...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Vessel Network Optimization in the Great Lakes Region

Publication Date
The Great Lakes region is a convenient transportation route for the suppliers and the customers in North America. Various types of goods are being transported in the region including dry bulk commodities such as iron ore, coal, grain, and salt. The sponsor company for this project is a provider of...
CTL Globe
Report

Supplier Diversity: Metrics, Certification, and Program Best Practices

Publication Date

On January 12, 2021, the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) convened a virtual roundtable to explore key topics across supplier diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). Participants represented nine industries within manufacturing, retail, and services, and their companies were at various points in their supplier diversity (SD) journey, which enabled an exchange of experiences and fresh perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and future of supplier diversity.

CTL Globe
Paper

On-demand food delivery: a systematic literature review

Publication Date
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to review the extant academic literature on on-demand food delivery (ODFD) services, i.e. the delivery of freshly prepared meals from restaurants to customers enabled by online platforms; second, to propose directions for future research in this field.
European Journal of Operational Research logo
Paper

Optimal in-store fulfillment policies for online orders in an omni-channel retail environment

Publication Date
The explosive growth of e-commerce creates a need for increasingly responsive omni-channel fulfillment capabilities, which raises new challenges in inventory management and order fulfillment for retailers. In response to these challenges, many retailers attempt to establish so-called ship-from-store concepts, which leverage their physical store networks to fulfill online orders. In...
CTL Globe
Report

Analytics of the Future: Predictive Analytics

Publication Date

MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) hosted a virtual roundtable for its Supply Chain Exchange partners in which leading companies discussed predictive analytics. The event combined presentations from academia and industry with sharing by all attendees of their experiences, challenges, and ideas. To encourage candor, no statements in this report have been attributed to any specific company.

Transportation Research: Part E logo
Paper

Real-time demand forecasting for an urban delivery platform

Publication Date
Meal delivery platforms like Uber Eats shape the landscape in cities around the world. This paper addresses forecasting demand on a grid into the short-term future, enabling, for example, predictive routing applications. We propose an approach incorporating both classical forecasting and machine learning methods and adapt model evaluation and selection...
CTL Globe
Paper

Consumer’s (not so) Green Purchase Behavior

Publication Date
The large body of research investigating the discrepancy between consumers' progressive environmental attitudes in polls, and their actual purchase behavior, has provided inconsistent results. This paper complements existing research using an 'interception' of consumers at the shopping aisle, thus using more objective behavioral data. Our analysis indicates a neglectable impact...
Transport and Environment cover
Paper

Well-to-Tank Carbon Emissions from Crude Oil Maritime Transportation

Publication Date
International seaborne transport of crude oil takes place mainly on tankers, with annual seaborne crude flows totaling an estimated 12 billion barrels. To take into account the carbon footprint on crude oil from its international distribution segment, we utilize a micro-level dataset of more than 28,000 individual shipment samples to...
Environmental Research Letters cover
Paper

Responsible or reckless? A critical review of the environmental and climate assessments of mineral supply chains

Publication Date
This paper critically reviews and identifies gaps in the methodologies used to analyze the environmental impacts of mineral and metal global supply chains. Of specific focus are assessments of the extraction and production of minerals and metals needed for a low-carbon energy future. Current trends and projections suggest that the...
Logistics and Transportation Review cover
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...
European Journal of Operational Research cover
Paper

Designing Multi-Tier, Multi-Service-Level, and Multi-Modal Last-Mile Distribution Networks for Omni-Channel Operations

Publication Date
The fast and dynamic evolution of e-retailing is driving structural changes in the way companies are reaching the urban consumer. Companies are offering faster delivery services, deploying collection-and-delivery points and multi-echelon distribution networks with a range of facility types, diversifying last-mile transportation modes with new types of vehicles and contracting...
Sustainability Report
Report

State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report 2020

Publication Date

In this inaugural edition, the MIT CTL and CSCMP teamed up to explore how sustainability practices are being implemented in global supply chains and what that means for companies and professionals in the State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2020.

Download the State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2020 report.

CTL Globe
Paper

Fresh approaches to omni-channel in the grocery business

Publication Date
The innovative omni-channel supply chain models that have reshaped many parts of the retail industry continue to evolve in response to market changes. One of these changes is the increasing demand for grocery products ordered online, a trend reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic that imposed restrictions on the use of...
Transportation Research Part A Logo
Paper

The value of physical distribution flexibility in serving dense and uncertain urban markets

Publication Date
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...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

A natural language processing approach to improve demand forecasting in long supply chains

Publication Date
Information sharing is one of the established approaches to improve demand forecasting and reduce the bullwhip effect, but it is infeasible to do so effectively in a long supply chain. Using the polystyrene industry as a case study, this thesis explores the usage of modern natural language processing (NLP) techniques...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

An Omnichannel Distribution Model to Better Serve Online Customers

Publication Date
With the rising adoption of e-commerce and online shopping, many retailers are facing the challenge of transitioning across channels to offer a seamless customer experience. One way of addressing this challenge consists of leveraging omnichannel retailing. Our sponsor company, a large US grocery retailer, is striving toward providing an omnichannel...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Application of Linear Models, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting Methods to Identify Key Factors and Predict Truck Dwell Time for a Global 3PL Company

Publication Date
Driver dwell time is an important challenge the U.S trucking industry faces. High, unplanned dwell times are costly to all stakeholders in the industry as they result in detention costs, declining performance and decreased driver capacity. With the increasing demand for these services, it is important to maximize the driving...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Assessing the State of Supply Chain Sustainability

Publication Date
Supply chain sustainability has increased in importance for companies of all sizes, public and private, across a wide range of industries. While there has been increased excitement in tandem with proclamations of lofty goals around the topic of supply chain sustainability, it has proven challenging to operationalize sustainability when many...
CTL Globe
Thesis/Capstone

Building Sustainable Supply Chains in the Era of e-Commerce

Publication Date
Consumer preferences are driving changes within the retail space. E-Commerce is growing rapidly and there are increased pressures on companies to be environmentally friendly, yet still cost-competitive. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for retailers to adjust their distribution network to accommodate these new customer preferences. Four key steps...