<p> This study involved the use of a quantitative, cross-sectional design to test the tenet of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) that connects a logistics organization&rsquo;s ability to adapt to dwindling natural resources and economic sustainability. Through an examination of the correlation of alternative fuel use and the financial measurement of cost as percent of sales in U.S.-based, publicly traded third party logistics (3PL) companies using 2013 financial data, a statistically significant, strong, negative correlation was affirmed, indicating a correlation between alternative fuel use and improved financial performance. The statistical correlation of implementing alternative fuels and financial performance serves to remove the assumed financial barrier to implementing alternative fuels for logistics practitioners in the context of the impending apocalypse of a global $10.2 trillion transportation system that is fueled by oil that will eventually run out. As a field of study, sustainability in logistics has few theoretical frameworks and there is a clear need for quantitative research to evaluate those that do exist. This study addressed the need for research by adding directly to the body of logistics sustainability knowledge, establishing a template for future research, and reaffirming the need for the standardization of non-financial reporting.</p><p>

<p> Snowfall presents a hazard to drivers by reducing visibility and increasing safe stopping distances. As a result, some drivers cancel trips if snowfall is occurring or forecasted, and traffic volumes often decrease on snowy days. Lake-effect snow is very localized and is thus hypothesized to have a lesser influence on traffic volume than synoptic-scale snow, which usually covers a broader areal extent. Traffic volume in northeast Ohio and northern Indiana is studied using a matched-pair analysis to determine if volumes differ between lake-effect and synoptic-scale snowfall in these regions. While little statistical evidence is found to support this hypothesis, other relationships are discovered: lake-effect traffic volume is shown to be dependent in part on distance from the lake and population density of the surrounding area. Other trends relating traffic volume to time-of-day and accident patterns are also explored. Findings presented herein can assist in transportation planning, risk analysis, and roadway safety.</p><p>

This thesis investigates production-inventory systems where replenishments are received every period (for example every day or shift), but where production plans are determined less frequently (weekly, fortnightly, or monthly). Such systems are said to use staggered deliveries. This practice is common in industry, but the theoretical knowledge is limited to a small set of inventory models, none of which include capacity costs. This thesis uses time series analysis to expand our understanding of staggered deliveries from the perspectives of inventory and production-inventory control. The contribution to inventory theory consists in the development of an optimal policy for autocorrelated demand and linear inventory costs, including exact expressions for costs, availability, and fill rate. In addition the thesis identifies a procedure for finding the optimal order cycle length, when a onceper- cycle audit cost is present. Notably, constant safety stocks are suboptimal, and cause both availability and fill rate to fluctuate over the cycle. Instead, the safety stocks should vary over time, causing the availability, but not the fill rate, to be constant. The contribution to production-inventory theory comes from two perspectives: First, an optimal policy is derived for quadratic inventory and capacity costs; second, four pragmatic policies are tested, each affording a different approach to production smoothing and the allocation of overtime work (once per cycle, or an equal amount of overtime every period). Assuming independent and identically distributed demand, these models reveal that all overtime or idling should be allocated to the first period of each cycle. Furthermore, it is shown that the order cycle length provides a crude production smoothing mechanism. Should a company with long reorder cycles decide to plan more often, the capacity costs may increase. Therefore, supply chains should implement a replenishment policy capable of production smoothing before the order cycle length is reduced.

Maritime logistics plays a critical but often unnoticed role in global supply chains. Management of buyer-supplier relationships is central to the success of SCM. Therefore, as the essential part within the global supply chain relationships, it is important to study the inter-organizational relationships in maritime logistics network. The dominant consideration of relationship management research in maritime logistics has been focused on a dyadic level, and little research has looked at this issue from a network view. In addition, bringing about higher value through the process of complex exchange in business has been recognized, but seldom been examined empirically, neither has been the relevance between service complexity and the relationship strength. This thesis thus aims to explore the relationship structure and the value generated within the maritime logistics from a network perspective, mainly considering the service complexity within a varied of influential factors. Mixed methods approach has been adopted, using semi-structure interviews, quantitative questionnaire survey and social network analysis. The research framework based on logistics triad is established, and rich insights were obtained from industry. This leads to the evaluation of the relationship strength in maritime logistics networks, the association between service complexity and the nature of relationship in them, and the value generated in the networks, by using three-level analysis and six-dimensional measurement for relationship strengths. In terms of the major findings, this research identifies that not every link has the same level of integration in the network. A range of contingency factors affecting relationship strength are recognised. There is generally a positive correlation between service complexity and relationship strength, although some links do not demonstrate this. Likewise, there is an affirmative correlation between service complexity and value perceived. Nevertheless, only the values perceived by freight forwarders in each types of service are statistically significant. Until now, there has been very little consideration of using network perspective to measure and analyse the relationship dynamics and value generated in line with different service complexity in the maritime logistics, and therefore this thesis represents a clear contribution to the literature.

M.Comm. / This dissertation explores the links between social exclusion and public transport in both the urban and rural context of South Africa, taking into account an increasing awareness to conserve energy and to reposition public transport in a more cost-effective manner. High levels of poverty and social inequality and their effects on crime, unemployment, poor education, disability and bad health are major policy focii for most political parties and government. Inadequate transport is increasingly being recognised as a barrier to employment as well as other key activities and is thus an important contributing and reinforcing factor in people’s continued poverty and social exclusion. In general, public transport is often expensive, unsafe, unreliable and uncomfortable. In many cases, it fails to provide access to key services. Travelling distances from home to work can also be very long resulting in excessive journey times. Low income households, not only in the rural areas but also in the inner cities, often cannot access adequate transport. This dissertation intends to make a contribution to the understanding of social exclusion in the South African context by deepening our knowledge about how and why people are excluded. It will identify and articulate the transport problems that socially disadvantaged people experience on a daily basis and will demonstrate how this affects their livelihoods. A major output of this research is to make practical recommendations for the provision of seamless transport services that will promote social cohesion. Although many textbooks on marketing stress the need to segment the market, this study suggests that in the field of public transport in South Africa at the present time, a segmented approach is inappropriate and that a standard approach be adopted in terms of which the same basic level and quality of service should be offered to the entire community. This study will draw attention to the fact that in cities in India, the poor and the rich often live close to each other – a situation that applies equally to South Africa. In these circumstances, the most appropriate policy would be to introduce a service that offers a consistent quality of service into all areas. The study will also refer to the need to obtain value for money, taking into account the ever-increasing cost of energy, its future availability (or lack thereof) and the need to adopt practices that are more environmentally sensitive than before.

The aim of this research is to present and discuss the development and deployment of Lean thinking models and techniques applied to improve the decision-making within the planning and design processes of new infrastructures, within a healthcare organisation. In the UK, healthcare organisations are responsible for planning, designing, building and managing their own infrastructures, through which their services are delivered to the local population (Kagioglou & Tzortzopoulos, 2010). These processes are long and complex, involving a large range of stakeholders who are implicated within the strategic decision-making. It is understood that the NHS lacks models and frameworks to support the decision-making associated with their new infrastructure development and that ad-hoc methods, used at local level, lead to inefficiencies and weak performances, despite the contractual efforts made throughout the PPP and PFI schemes (Baker & Mahmood, 2012; Barlow & Koberle-Gaiser, 2008). This is illustrated by the long development cycle time – it can take up to 15 years from conception to completion of new infrastructure. Hence, in collaboration with an NHS organisation, an empirical action research embedded within a mixed-methodology approach, has been designed to analyse the root-cause problems and assess to what extent Lean thinking can be applied to the built environment, to improve the speed and fitness for purpose of new infrastructures. Firstly, this multiphase research establishes the main issues responsible for the weak process performances, via an inductive-deductive cycle, and then demonstrates how Lean thinking inspired techniques: Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) using ER and AHP, Benchmarking and Quality Function Deployment (QFD), have been implemented to optimise the decision-making in order to speed up the planning and design decision-making processes and to enhance the fitness for purpose of new infrastructures. Academic literatures on Lean thinking, decision theories and built environment have been reviewed, in order to establish a reliable knowledge base of the context and to develop relevant solutions. The bespoke models developed have been tested and implemented in collaboration with a local healthcare organisation in UK, as part of the construction of a £15 million health centre project. A substantial set of qualitative and quantitative data has been collected during the 450 days, which the researcher was granted full access, plus a total of 25 sets of interviews, a survey (N=85) and 25 experimental workshops. This mixed-methodology research is composed of an exploratory sequential design and an embedded-experiment variant, enabling the triangulation of different data, methods and findings to be used to develop an innovative solution, thus improving the new infrastructure development process. The emerging developed conceptual model represents a non-prescriptive approach to planning and designing new healthcare infrastructures, using Lean thinking principles to optimise the decision-making and reduce the complexity. This Partial & Bespoke Lean Construction Framework (PBLCF) has been implemented as good practice by the healthcare organisation, to speed up the planning phases and to enhance the quality of the design and reduce the development cost, in order to generate a competitive edge. It is estimated that a reduction of 22% of the cycle time and 7% of the cost is achievable. This research makes a contribution by empirically developing and deploying a partial Lean implementation into the healthcare‟s built environment, and by providing non-prescriptive models to optimise the decision-making underpinning the planning and design of complex healthcare infrastructure. This has the potential to be replicated in other healthcare organisations and can also be adapted to other construction projects.

<p>The negotiation and communication of logistics management decisions between buyers and sellers of goods is critical for effective supply chain management. Incoterms? rules, a set of three character acronyms, are often used by buyers and sellers to communicate each party?s logistics management responsibilities when transacting goods. Inappropriate application of Incoterms? rules can lead to miscommunication of logistics responsibilities and expose either party to unanticipated costs and risks. This three-part mixed methods research explores the circumstances that contribute to errors in logistics management decision communication within buyer-seller dyads, the consequences of these errors, and methods to improve logistics management decision communication. Study 1 is a qualitative pilot case study that explores how buyer-seller dyads negotiate and communicate logistics management decisions and the communication errors that occur within a large, anonymous, international corporation. Study 2 conducts multiple qualitative case studies utilizing in-depth semi-structured interviews that explore how buyer-seller dyads negotiate and communicate logistics management decisions and the communication errors that occur within these buyer-seller dyads. Study 3 quantitatively tests hypotheses developed from analysis of the results of Study 2, using a scenario-based experiment deployed via a questionnaire, and seeks to find methods to improve the quality of communication of logistics management decisions in buyer-seller dyads. The hypotheses tested in Study 3 are H1: Incoterms? training leads to a decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions; H2: using fully specified and explicit Incoterms? definitions leads to a decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions; and H3: using both fully specified and explicit Incoterms? definitions and Incoterms? training leads to a further decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions. Examining the results of the questionnaire, using binary logistic regression and ordinal logistics regression, H1 is supported, H2 is partially supported, and H3 is not supported. The findings of the research detail the process used in the negotiation and communication of logistics management decisions. While Incoterms? rules appear widely used in goods transactions to communicate logistics decisions, their inappropriate use causes a variety of issues including unanticipated costs and risks. Incoterms? training is shown to have the biggest impact on improving the quality of buyer-seller dyads? communication of logistics management decisions.

<p> Evident similarities and links between the outcomes of traffic crashes and stranded (or constrained) mobility have been identified and are reported in this research. Generally, a high level of travel activities is an indicator of high crash exposure. However, studies have shown that the highest rates of traffic fatalities occur in low- and middle-income regions, where many citizens experience relatively low levels of motorized travel. This ironic observation reveals serious challenges facing transport mobility systems in the less privileged regions of the world. Studies on traffic crashes and mobility constraints also reveal that they both have individual and regional variations in their occurrence, effects, and severities. Consequently, the outcomes of traffic crashes and constrained mobility are serious public health concerns worldwide.</p><p> As public health problems, their study is analogous to the study of diseases and other injuries and thus, suitable for the application of epidemiological techniques. This dissertation therefore explores the use of epidemiological techniques to analyze traffic crashes and mobility/accessibility constraints from a human-centered perspective. The dissertation therefore consists of two major focus areas. The first part of the study applies widely used epidemiology/public health &ndash; based statistical tools to analyze traffic crashes with the aim of gaining better understanding of the human-centered causes and factors that influence these causes, and how these ultimately affect the severity of crashes. This part is further divided into two sub-sections. The first sub-section used latent class analysis to identify homogeneous clusters of human-centered crash causal factors and then applied latent class logit and random parameters logit modeling techniques to investigate the effects of these factors on crash outcomes. The second sub-section of the first part of the dissertation applies multilevel regression analysis to understand the effects of driver residential factors on driver behaviors in an attempt to explain the area-based differences in the severity of road crashes across sub-regions. Both studies are necessary to develop potential human-centered mitigations and interventions and for the effective and targeted implementation of those countermeasures. The second part of the study provides an epidemiological framework for addressing mobility/accessibility constraints with a view to diagnosing symptoms, recommending treatment, and even discussing the idea of transmission of constrained mobility among city dwellers. The medical condition, hypomobility, has been used to connote constrained mobility and accessibility for people in urban areas. In transportation and urban studies, hypomobility can result in a diminished ability to engage in economic opportunities and social activities, hence deepening poverty and social exclusion and increasing transport costs, among other negative outcomes. The condition is especially pronounced in poor urban areas in developing countries. The framework proposed in this study is expected to help identify and address barriers to mobility and accessibility in the rapidly growing cities throughout the developing world, with particular applicability to the rapidly developing cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. </p><p> Ultimately, this dissertation explores the application of epidemiological techniques to two major transportation problems: traffic safety and constrained mobility. The techniques presented in this dissertation provide policy makers, agencies, and transport professionals with tools for evidence-based policies and effective implementation of appropriate countermeasures.</p><p>

Outsourcing within the logistics and supply chain sector is perceived as a method to save money and improve client service levels. The outsourcing process exists within a highly stratified market of service provision and high value commercial arrangements may extend over many years. The client has a responsibility to define the strategy for their supply chain and agree distribution channel objectives which support the wider organisation’s brand delivery. There is a variety of solutions to satisfy these objectives of which outsourcing is one and should be accompanied by clear success criteria as well as a governance structure in order to yield a long term successful commercial arrangement. It is perceived that organisations may not follow an iterative approach towards outsourcing and that failing to adhere to these principles results in a lack of satisfaction for both parties evidenced by high contract turnover rates. This Phd thesis has investigated the issue of solution design within outsourced logistics amongst a group of 400 senior logistics managers through case studies, interviews and a three round Delphi survey. The hypothesis for this investigation was ‘the length and stability of an outsourcing relationship is directly related to the amount of effort expended by the customer in designing their logistics solution’. It was found that clients develop logistics strategy in varying degrees and over varying timescales. Clients measure the cost of supply chain activities with varying frequencies and few follow a straight forward method to define the parameters of a successful supply chain. Within outsourcing arrangements, governance and the management of change were poorly interpreted and executed. The current and future stratifications of logistics service offerings relied on a degree of collaboration between the pursuant parties and it was difficult to determine the effectiveness of these approaches when the balance of power between the parties was so unequal. Both clients and service providers were found to be poorly prepared to grasp the opportunities presented by the rising costs of energy and the future demands of reducing carbon intensity within the sector. Contributions were defined in terms of service level stratification and likely risk, behaviours and a toolkit for clients to observe when working within the outsourced environment as well as the opportunities presented by the changes currently influencing the sector. In conclusion, the hypothesis was found to be valid and the important role the client has to play in specifying and managing their logistics service provision was applicable across the logistics and supply chain industry.

The back bone of international trade has always been international transport. Without good transport networks, the movement of goods and services from one frontier to another would be an uphill task, and would greatly hinder development in international trade. The impact of such poor transport networks would reflect negatively on economies that rely on international trade for the growth of their nations. Nevertheless, perfect transport networks would be useless if the performance of the business of carriage was not regulated by a law developed to meet the standards established by time, and that would regulate the relationship of the parties under contracts of carriage, mainly the carrier, consignor and consignee, so as to ensure certainty and equality in the allocation of risks between the parties thereunder. This research focuses on the carriage of goods by sea. Like most other modes of transport, one of the major issues that arises in the business of carriage of goods by sea is the conflict between the carrier, consignor and consignee, with regards to the allocation of risk in the carriage. Over the years, early rules that were developed to regulate the relationship of the parties under contracts of carriage of goods by sea placed the carrier in a dominant position over the consignor. The carrier issued a standard bill of lading which exempted him from almost all liability for damage or loss of the goods in his care. The consignors and bona fide third parties, not satisfied with the terms of carriage contracts brought a lot of pressure to bear on their governments to enact legislation protecting their interests in the transaction. The United States of America were the first to pass such national law revising the position of the parties under contracts of carriage. In 1893 the United States of America passed the Harter Act. This Act aimed at imposing limits of liability on the carrier to which no derogation could be brought. However, this was a dangerous precedence which was going to hinder international trade rather than improve on it, as different nations developing local legislation on carriage meant conflict of laws. In order to avoid the extensive nationalisation of carriage laws, the international maritime community set to develop rules that would regulate carriage by sea. Over the years convention has succeeded convention such that today four international regimes (The Hague Rules, Hague-Visby Rules, Hamburg Rules and Rotterdam Rules), exist regulating carriage of goods by sea. This research takes an in-depth look at these regimes that were developed to regulate carriage by sea, and the author aims to identify a particular regime that meets the standards of modern day practice of carriage of goods, and advocate for the ratification of this regime, to the exclusion of all others so as to foster uniformity, certainty and equality in the business of carriage of goods by sea.