Truck-based freight transportation continues to play a vital role in the delivery of goods in the United States. Despite its size and importance, the truck transportation industry continues to struggle with fulfilling transportation requests in an efficient and sustainable manner. One potential solution to alleviate many of the current truck industry problems is for transportation service providers (TSPs) to collaborate by sharing volume, resources, and facilities. This research introduces the Transportation Service Provider Collaboration Problem (TSP-CP) to demonstrate the benefits of using optimal freight routing and consolidation decisions for collaborating TSPs. A mathematical model for the TSP-CP is introduced to describe the problem in detail. Additionally, two separate adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) heuristics are developed to provide solutions to industry representative problem instances. Finally, the benefits and insights achieved by enabling collaboration between TSPs using the TSP-CP are identified using industry representative data sets. The representative data sets were derived from actual freight data provided by a freight pooling company that manages collaboration among TSPs. Carriers were chosen from the industry data to evaluate collaborative partnerships and to gain insights on the effects of partnership characteristics on overall benefit as well as the benefits obtained by individual carriers. The computational results suggested collaboration among TSPs offers the potential for substantial reductions in the total distance required to deliver all loads, in the number miles that were traveled completely empty, and the number of containers required for delivery compared to individual performance. Additionally, collaboration increased delivery resource capacity utilization as measured by the percentage of weighted full miles. Detailed analysis of the results from the TSP-CP revealed new insights into the collaboration between full truckload and less-than truckload carriers that have not been quantified or highlighted in previous research. These insights included the effect that an individual carrier's type and size had on the amount of benefit received to each carrier. Finally, the results highlighted the importance of building collaborative partnerships that consider a carrier's geographic location. / Ph. D. / Truck-based freight transportation continues to play a vital role in the delivery of goods in the United States by carrying nearly 70% of all freight tonnage. Despite its size and importance, the truck industry continues to struggle with transporting freight in an efficient, timely, and sustainable manner. One potential solution to alleviate many of the current truck industry problems is for transportation service providers (TSP) to collaborate by sharing resources, facilities, and freight volume. This research introduces the Transportation Service Provider Collaboration Problem (TSP-CP) to demonstrate the benefits of using optimal freight routing and consolidation decisions for collaborating TSPs. The benefits and insights achieved by enabling collaboration between TSPs using the TSPCP are identified using industry representative data sets. The representative data sets were derived from actual freight data provided by a freight pooling company that manages collaboration among TSPs. The computational results suggested collaboration among TSPs offers the potential for substantial reductions in the total distance required to deliver all freight, in the number of miles that were traveled by containers completely empty, and in the number of containers required for delivery compared to individual performance. Additionally, collaboration increased delivery resource capacity utilization. Detailed analysis of the results from the TSP-CP also revealed new insights into TSP collaboration. These insights included the effect that an individual carrier’s type and size had on the amount of benefit received to each carrier. Finally, the results highlighted the importance of building collaborative partnerships that consider a TSP’s geographic location.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / The aim of the research study was to examine and analyse the main constraints faced by the Polokwane Local Municipality in delivery water services to Mabokelele Village. For the researcher to be able to achieve the aim of the study, key research questions were posed which enabled the researcher to gather / collect data that helped shed more light in the research project. Research questions such as what are the constraints faced by the Polokwane Local Municipality in water delivery services, and what strategies are been to address those constraints and how effective are those strategies, were posed to the participants of this research study. The study used the qualitative research design. Respondents were seen as experts of their own life situation. Face to face interviews were used to collect data from the participants. Data analyses was done in the form of content data analysis. The key findings of the research project:- Shortage of skills in financial management, inadequate water service infrastructure, inadequate human resource for water service delivery, lack of co-operation between the Polokwane Municipality and the Mabokelele Induna and lack of community participation and consultation by the Polokwane Local Municipality and long delays caused by the tendering process were identified as the key findings for the study. Recommendations for the study was guided by the findings of the research project. The following served as recommendations for the study : Polokwane Local Municipality should ensure that people with financial management skills and project management are employed to avoid under-spending of the budget. Community participation and consultation should be key when implementing projects to the community, Department of Water Affairs to ensure that enough water service infrastructure is provided so that the Municipality can function properly. Dwarf should speed up the transfer of officials to Polokwane Local Municipality and lastly, the red tapes in the tendering processes should be minimized to avoid long delays in the approval of water projects.

Studien avsåg att undersöka hur byggföretag inom Sveriges gränser påverkats av de omständigheterna som präglade världen under åren 2020–2023, varav fokuset i denna studie ligger på byggföretagens utmaningar i samband med Covid-19 och kriget i Ukraina. Genom att fokusera på dessa samband ska studien ge en inblick i byggföretagens situation och upplevelser inom ämnet, vilket således bidrar med en ökad kunskap som ger möjlighet till framtida problemlösning och vidare forskning. Studien genomfördes i form av en enkätundersökning där frågorna berörde de problem och möjligheter byggföretag i Sverige har ställts inför under Covid-19 pandemin samt kriget i Ukraina. Resultatet visade att byggföretagen hade påverkats både positivt och negativt, varav en slutsats som drogs var kopplingen mellan en ökad efterfrågan på byggtjänster under Covid-19 och leveransproblem, vilket ledde till att materialpriser samt byggföretagens kostnader sköt kraftigt i höjden. Positiva effekter som kunde identifieras till följd av dessa omständigheter var byggföretagens ökade medvetenhet om noggrann planering, bättre framförhållning i deras projekt och mer samverkande transpor / The purpose of this essay was to study the impact of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine on the construction industry in Sweden. By focusing on the trials and tribulations that followed as a consequence of these circumstances during the period of 2020 – 2023, this essay aims to identify the situations and experiences of the construction companies which will provide better understanding of the subject, possibilities for future problem solving and the framework for continued research. The study was performed as a questionnaire survey where the questions were designed to gather information about the challenges and opportunities that the construction companies in Sweden faced during the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The result of the study showed that these circumstances had both positive and negative impacts on the construction industry, where one conclusion which was drawn was the connection between a temporarily increased demand in construction services during the Covid-19 pandemic and delivery problems, which led to heavily increased prices on materials in demand and therefore high costs for the construction companies as well. There were some positive effects that could be identified as well as a result of this study, such as the construction companies experiencing an increased awareness of careful planning in their projects and better collaboration in transports. / <p>2023-06-26</p>

La logistique collaborative est récemment devenue un élément important pour beaucoup d'entreprises afin d'améliorer l'efficacité de leur chaîne logistique. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les possibilités offertes par les problèmes de collectes et livraisons pour améliorer les performances des chaînes logistiques grâce au transport collaboratif. La thèse est inscrite dans un projet européen nommé SCALE (Step Change in Agri-food Logistics Ecosystem). Dans un premier temps, deux métaheuristiques sont proposées et étudiées pour résoudre le problème de collectes et livraisons avec transbordements. Celles-ci sont comparées aux travaux de la littérature et permettent d’améliorer les résultats sur certaines instances. Dans un deuxième temps, un modèle pour un problème de collectes et livraisons (PDVRP) est proposé. Celui-ci est utilisé pour étudier les bénéfices de la collaboration sur le transport. Il est appliqué sur des données générées aléatoirement et sur des données réelles issues du projet SCALE. Enfin troisièmement, un modèle pour un PDVRP particulier est présenté. Dans ce modèle, les marchandises doivent passer par exactement deux points de transbordement entre les points de collecte et les points de livraison. Ce problème est inspiré d'une seconde étude de cas réalisée dans le cadre du projet SCALE. Ceci permet de mettre en évidence l’intérêt de la collaboration et du transbordement dans le domaine du transport de marchandises. / Collaborative logistics have become recently an important element for many companies to improve their supply chains efficiency. In this thesis, we study pickup and delivery problems to improve supply chains efficiency thanks to collaborative transportation. The thesis was part of the European project SCALE (Step Change in Agri-food Logistics Ecosystem). Firstly, two metaheuristics are proposed and studied to solve the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Transshipments. These metaheuristics are compared with literature works and the results of several instances are improved. Secondly, a mathematical model for a pickup and delivery problem (PDVRP) is proposed. This model is used to study the benefits of collaboration on transportation. It is applied on random data and on a case study from SCALE with real data. Finally, a model for a particular PDVRP is presented. In this model, the shipments have to cross exactly two transshipments nodes between their pickup and delivery points. This problem is inspired by a second case study made during the project SCALE. This allows to highlight the importance of collaboration and transshipment in the field of goods transportations.