published_or_final_version / abstract / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Nowadays, safety and environmental awareness about the increased industrial accidents have become a critical issue that concerns both, individuals and governmental policies. This leads to higher demands on the manufacturing industry to be safer and more environmentally friendly. Recently, there has been a number of industrial accidents and serious fires in the world that have increased because of using plastic composite IBC containers in industrial manufacturing. And this becomes a common important issue for all manufacturers that strive to improve their environmental performance. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate different available options of oil fluid storage and transportation in the industry, and to identify the most crucial factors related to each storage and transportation mode. Those factors are investigated and highlighted regarding to their effect on quality, environment and work environment. The thesis also aims to investigate and analyse the hazards associated with oil storage in the plant and in the warehouse and to use risk management strategies in order to identify and mitigate risks in the early stages. The work is carried out at GKN Driveline Köping AB that required a study of the methods used in industry for oil storage and transportation. Therefore the work focuses on identifying suppliers’ different transportation processes including different packaging options. This report includes an explanation of the methodology that is used to perform the task that the company has entrusted, and also contains a review of the comprehensive literature study. The method used to investigate hazards associated with oil transportation and storage is risk management that includes risk assessment tools, FMEA analysis and Ishikawa diagram. FMEA is performed to analyse both, the company’s current process and the process of filling oil by tank trucks regarding quality, environment and work environment. Benchmarking is another analysing tool used to analyse Volvo Power train and GKN Driveline different performances. The empirical findings are analysed by utilizing the JIT philosophy to identify the non value added activities and then determine the inconsistency with JIT philosophy. Kaizen and possible improvements are identified as well, with the help of the visual map VSM. The results that have been achieved are presented and modified according to what suppliers can provide, what the law demands, what the insurance requires and even what fits with the plant structure. The conclusion includes a description of the relation between internal and external logistics and how the synergy between them affects the choice for different transportation processes. It also includes a suggestion for possible improvement regarding logistical costs and transportation costs.

Whilst container shipping has become increasingly important over the past few decades due to its obvious advantages, container shipping companies have faced various risks from different sources in their operations. Systematic academic studies on this topic are few; and in light of this, this study aims to systematically explore and analyse the risks in container shipping operations and to examine the applicable risk mitigation strategies in a logistics perspective, including information flow, physical flow, and payment flow. This thesis uses Taiwan container shipping industry as a case study, and borrows four steps of risk management as the main method, which includes risk identification, risk analysis, risk mitigation strategies identification, and strategies evaluation. In order to ensure the analysis is inclusive and systematic, risk factors and risk mitigation strategies are identified through a related literature review and are validated through a set of interviews. Risk analysis is conducted through using questionnaires, and then through risk ranking, risk matrix, risk mapping, and P-I graph. Risk mitigation strategies are evaluated through classic AHP and fuzzy AHP analysis. A number of significant findings have been obtained. Firstly, 35 risk factors are identified and classified into three categories: risks associated with information flow, risks associated with physical flow, and risks associated with payment flow. After collecting and analysing the risk-factor survey, the results indicate that the risk associated with physical flow has the more significant impact on shipping companies’ operation. However, one risk factor associated with information flow, “shippers hiding cargo information”, has the most significant impact among the 35 risk factors. Secondly, 20 risk mitigation strategies are identified and classified into three categories: intra-organisational strategies, intra-channel strategies, and inter-channel strategies. After collecting the AHP survey and analysing through classic AHP and fuzzy AHP, the result indicates that “slot exchange, slot charter, joint fleet, ship charter with other container shipping companies” is the most important strategy. The main contributions of this thesis include: (1) based on the literature review, there have been no research on risk management in the context of container shipping operation from a broad logistics perspective, and this thesis is the first attempt to fill this research gap; (2) this thesis uses Taiwan shipping industry as a case study to apply the framework, which generates useful managerial insights; (3) the conceptual model of risk management developed in this thesis can be applied to container shipping operations in other countries and regions; (4) compared with several studies using secondary data, this thesis uses empirical data to conduct the risk analysis, and make the results more close to the reality situation in container shipping; (5) in terms of risk analysis, this thesis ranks the total 35 risk factors rather than only identify the most important one, this can be used to be generalised to the whole container shipping companies in Taiwan, or even to the whole world; (6) in terms of risk management, the previous studies usually analyse only the importance of strategies. However, this thesis analyses the results of AHP from three different angles: reducing financial loss, reducing reputation loss, and reducing safety and security incident related loss. This can provide different angles for the managers who are considering different aspects.

The container loading problem considered in this thesis is to determine placements of a set of packages within one or multiple shipping containers. Smaller packages are consolidated on pallets prior to being loaded in the shipping containers together with larger packages. There are multiple objectives which may be summarized as fitting all the packages while achieving good stability of the cargo as well as the shipping containers themselves. According to recent literature reviews, previous research in the field have to large extent been neglecting issues relevant in practice. Our real-world application was developed for the industrial company Atlas Copco to be used for sea container shipments at their Distribution Center (DC) in Texas, USA. Hence all applicable practical constraints faced by the DC operators had to be treated properly. A high variety in sizes, weights and other attributes such as stackability among packages added complexity to an already challenging combinatorial problem. Inspired by how the DC operators plan and perform loading manually, the batch concept was developed, which refers to grouping of boxes based on their characteristics and solving subproblems in terms of partial load plans. In each batch, an extensive placement heuristic and a load plan evaluation run iteratively, guided by a Genetic Algorithm (GA). In the placement heuristic, potential placements are evaluated using a scoring function considering aspects of the current situation, such as space utilization, horizontal support and heavier boxes closer to the floor. The scoring function is weighted by coefficients corresponding to the chromosomes of an individual in the GA population. Consequently, the fitness value of an individual in the GA population is the rating of a load plan. The loading optimization software has been tested and successfully implemented at the DC in Texas. The software has been proven capable of generating satisfactory load plans within acceptable computation times, which has resulted in reduced uncertainty and labor usage in the loading process. Analysis using real sea container shipments shows that the GA is able to tune the scoring coefficients to suit the particular problem instance being solved.

This thesis analyze the impact on recycling from the increase in the deposit on metal cans that took place in Sweden, September 2010. This is done by using a fixed effects model, fixed on municipality, month, and year. Additionally, the thesis investigates the response of different socioeconomic groups to this change by investigating the interaction between deposit and variables for the socioeconomic factors of interest. Interactions for income, education, immigration, environmental awareness, and population density are investigated. The results show that, on avarage, the recycling in each of the Swedish municipalities have increased by 24.739 units per month, this represents an elasticity of recycling with respect to container deposit of 0.04. The results further indicate that there is strong negative interaction between deposit and income, suggesting that as income increases, the individual will be less responsive to a change in deposit. Contrary to theory, the results indicate positive interaction between deposit and education, indicating that, as education increases the individual becomes more responsive to a change in deposit.

The theme of the Master's Thesis is liner shipping. The main issue concerns the changes in the liner shipping market caused by the economic crisis started in 2008. The first theoretical part of the thesis deals with characterization and classification of the liner shipping. Further the thesis concentrates on the containerization and the international organizations in maritime business. The second part of the thesis considers the development of the liner shipping market since 2008 till present days. The fundamental part aims to the measures taken by liner operators and freight forwarders.

This diploma thesis analyzes the maritime container transport, it's history and development and the types of containers. It deals with the current situation in the maritime transport market. The main emphasis is on detailed description of the transport chain. The paper also deals with documents that are carried by sea, especially the Bill of Lading. This is a specific document, among other it is a tradable security. In the thesis there have also been mentioned the current issues of liability and insurance - (Rotterdam Rules and INCOTERMS 2010).

by Lee Yiu Fai. / Bibliography: leaf 64 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

by Chau Din-ching Michael and Leung Ping-chung Hermann. / Abstract also in Chinese / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1982 / Bibliography: leaves 105-106

This study attempts to develop realistic and relevant investment planning models for inland container transportation systems. An inland container transport system model has been constructed consisting of three sub-models: forecasting future total export container demand, the inland container traffic allocation model and the optimum port capacity model. The models may be utilised to identify the most effective investment plan for inland transportation infrastructure development and to evaluate the inland container transportation system. The procedure enables determination of the optimal locations, sizes and time of container port developments as well as the optimal container cargo flows through transportation networks. A Heuristic algorithm was developed for the purpose of evaluating alternative investment plans. Dynamic and Linear programming methods are applied to each of the two planning problems: the former for the optimum container port capacity development problem and the latter for the optimal allocation of inland container traffic movements. Finally, the model has been applied to concrete inland container transportation system problems in Korea. The results are reported and analysed. It is hoped that they may provide a guideline for actual development.