<p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Today the diesel-driven truck is the most used type of transportation of freight. Diesel-driven trucks emit carbon dioxide and other particles, leading to environmen- tal problems and people inhaling the emissions. To decrease the carbon footprint of road freight, one solution is to transition to trucks powered by electric engines. For the transition to happen, the transport buyers must be on board since they often set the level of importance for environmental aspects. To get the transport buyers to support the transition towards electric road freight, knowing what they find important when selecting suppliers and what they could do to contribute to the change is essential. This is why the purpose of the thesis is as follows. This thesis aims to identify what factors transport buyers prioritise when selecting a transport supplier and what actions transport buyers can take to contribute to the transition towards battery electric road freight. Ten large Swedish companies that procure road freight transport were interviewed in a case study to answer the purpose. The purpose was broken down into three research questions. The first targeted what factors transport buyers find important when procuring transportation. The second question focused on the transport buy- ers’ views regarding what barriers and benefits they see with transitioning to electric road freight. The last research question aimed to answer what actions transport buyers could take to contribute to the transition toward using battery electric road freight as a means of transportation. The study showed that the three most important factors when selecting a supplier were factors related to price, quality and environment. The environment has gained a lot of importance during the last couple of years and has changed the most for the transport buyers’ procurement of transportation. The most significant barri- ers for transport buyers to transition towards electric road freight was the lack of charging infrastructure and the uncertainty of who will take responsibility for the infrastructure development. The most significant benefit of transitioning was the reduced environmental footprint, which allowed for an improved brand value and allowed the companies to market themselves as sustainable. The study also showed that the actions that the transport buyers are most likely to perform, as well as most likely to have a positive impact on the transition towards electric freight vehicles, are collaborating with others and using longer contracts with the LSPs. More extended contracts would be something that could make the LSPs feel secure enough to commit to more significant investments such as BETs. Still, if a relationship between the LSP and the transport buyer reaches far back, the transport buyers think the connection would be more secure for the LSP than a more extended contract. Collaboration is the action with the most potential to make the transition towards battery-electric road freight happen. It has the most potential to overcome the most significant barrier for electric freight vehicles, the lack of infrastructure to charge them.

Healthcare is a large industry faced with major challenges, such as decreasing inpatient bed numbers and increases in the share of elderly people, which require improved efficiency and effectiveness. The organisation of hospitals normally comprises highly specialised clinical departments, through which patient flows are managed. Since patient flows often involve several clinical departments, this requires much coordination both in space and time. With every individual patient having different diseases, severity levels and responses to therapy, the variability in patient flows has an impact on the inflow, internal flow and outflow at clinical departments and hospitals. Historically, healthcare resources have not been adapted to these variations. The purpose of this licentiate thesis is therefore to explore how variable patient flows are managed in hospitals. This comprises how variable patient flows affect hospitals as well as how variable patient flows are handled. It also includes the organisational configuration, and the influence it has on the actions used to handle variable patient flows in hospitals. Both the hierarchical levels, roles and teams that make decisions and manage the flow of patients as well as the actions used to handle variable patient flows at hospitals are included in the research. Hence, an approach where the hospital is regarded as a system is used, an approach often described as a system perspective. Three research methods have been used in this licentiate thesis. The first research method used was simulation modelling, to study how changes in an acute patient flow affected an emergency department and inpatient ward at a small hospital. A case study at a university hospital was performed to study both the actions used to handle variable patient flows as well as the influence of the organisational configuration. Several literature reviews, both structured and unstructured, has also been made to compare and evaluate the results from the empirical data. There are several effects of variable patient flows. The case study indicates that increased patient flow variability leads to increases in bed utilization variability and thereby problems with bed shortages. Mismatches between patient inflow and outflow, in terms of number of patients, also lead to bed shortages. Literature reviews also show that bed shortages in inpatient wards are a major cause of overcrowding in emergency departments. The results from the simulation model point toward emergency departments being more adapted to variable patient inflow than inpatient wards. To handle these issues there is a need for flexibility when providing healthcare services, something suggested in the literature. 50 actions used at the university hospital to handle variable acute patient flows were identified in the research. A majority of these are used to handle the effects of the variation, not the variation itself. Nor is it effects of individual variations, such as patient inflow, that are handled but the combined effect of the variations in several variables. For example, much time and effort are spent handling bed shortages. One third of the actions are used at a hospital level, with the aim to have positive effects for the hospital as a whole. Two thirds are used and developed at a departmental level, with the aim to improve the situation at the clinical department by using the action. By having most of the actions used at individual clinical departments, without considering the impact on whole hospital, there is an obvious risk of sub-optimization. One explanation for many actions being used at a departmental level could be that there is lack of strategic direction and decision-making ability at top management level due to the use of unanimous decision-making in the hospital management group. This hinders the control and coordination of the actions used at different clinical departments, rendering them more similar to separate organisations. Departmental collaboration is also impeded as well as organisational learning at the hospital, both bottom-up and sideways in the hierarchies, encumbering the development and sharing of successful actions for handling variable patient flows.

<p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Transport investments and policies are increasingly turned towards dealing with transport congestion rather than with shortening the potential free flow travel time. However, appraisal methodologies for projects meant to reduce congestion are relatively less well developed compared to methodologies for projects aiming to reduce travel times. Static assignment models are for instance incapable of predicting the build-up and dissipation of traffic queues and capturing the experienced crowding caused by uneven on-board passenger loads. Despite of the availability of dynamic traffic assignment and despite of fairly concrete ideas of how integration with demand models could take place, only few model systems have been developed for real applications. The predicted reduction of traffic volume across the Gothenburg congestion charge cordon in the peak, 11%, turned out to be an accurate estimate of the observed reduction, 12%. The reduction in the off-peak, however, was overpredicted, as it was also in the Stockholm case. To analyse congestion charges in Stockholm it is necessary and fully possible to integrate DTA with the demand model. In the performed tests it could be seen that both tested models had problems replicating the flow on the main bypass early in the morning but otherwise performed well. A case study of a metro extension in Stockholm demonstrated that congestion effects constitute more than half of the total benefits and that these effects are excessively underestimated by a conventional static model. Effects of various operational measures can be analysed with BusMezzo and the results have been validated against observed data. The findings indicate that all three tested measures in a case study (boarding through all doors, headway-based holding and bus lanes) had an overall positive impact on service performance and that there are synergetic effects. Using a continuous VTT distribution and hierarchical route choice was demonstrated as a successful method of modelling the multi-passage rule implemented in Gothenburg congestion charges and was shown to give realistic predictions of route choice effects. First results from integration of DTA with a travel demand model for the Stockholm region show that even without systematic calibration the DTA is in reasonable agreement with observed traffic counts and travel times. The presented experiments did not reveal a striking difference between using a macroscopic and a microscopic assignment package. While travel time savings are often the only benefit included in public transport project appraisals, the best practice assigns weighted value of time to average load/capacity measures. However, failure to represent dynamic congestion effects may lead to substantial underestimation of the benefits of projects primarily designed to increase capacity rather than reduce travel times. The impact of small operational measures should not be underestimated. These measures are relatively cheap compared to investments in new transit infrastructure and large societal gains can therefore be achieved by their implementation. / Investeringar och åtgärdsprogram inom transportområdet handlar allt oftare om att råda bot på trängsel snarare än att minska potentiella friflödesrestider. Utvärderingsmetoder för projekt som syftar till att minska trängsel är dock mindre utvecklade än metoder för projekt som syftar till att minska restider. Statiska nätutläggningsmodeller är till exempel inte lämpade för att prognosera uppbyggnad och avveckling av köer eller för att fånga upplevd trängsel orsakad av ojämn belastning på kollektivtrafikfordon. Trots förekomsten av dynamisk trafikutläggning och trots tämligen konkret kunskap om hur integration med efterfrågemodeller kunde gå till, finns det endast ett fåtal modellsystem utvecklade för verklig tillämpning. Den predikterade trafikflödesminskningen på 11 % över trängselskattesnittet i Göteborg visade sig stämma väl överens med den observerade minskningen på 12 %. Minskningen under lågtrafik visade sig dock vara överskattad, precis som i Stockholmsfallet. För att analysera trängseleffekter i Stockholm är det nödvändigt och fullt möjligt att integrera en DTA-modell med efterfrågemodellen. I de utförda testerna observerades att båda de testade modellerna hade problem med att återskapa korrekta flöden på Essingeleden under morgonens maxtimme, men i övrigt gav god överensstämmelse. I en fallstudie av blå tunnelbanelinjes förlängning i Stockholm visade det sig att trängseleffekter utgjorde mer än hälften av de totala nyttorna och att dessa effekter är kraftigt underskattade i en konventionell statisk modell. Effekter av olika operationella åtgärder kan analyseras med BusMezzo och resultaten har blivit validerade mot observerade data. Resultaten tyder på att alla tre testade åtgärder i en fallstudie (ombordstigning i alla dörrar, turtäthetsbaserad reglering och busskörfält) hade en positiv inverkan på servicenivån och att det förekommer synergieffekter dem emellan. Användandet av kontinuerlig tidsvärdesfördelning och hierarkiskt ruttval har framgångsrikt demonstrerats som en metod för att modellera flerpassageregeln i Göteborgs trängselskattesystem och visade sig ge realistiska prediktioner av ruttvalseffekter. De första resultaten från integrationen DTA i efterfrågemodellen för Stockholmsregionen visar att även utan systematisk kalibrering är modellresultaten i paritet med observerad trafikflöden och restider. Experimentresultaten tyder inte på någon slående skillnad mellan att använda makroskopisk eller mikroskopisk nätutläggning. Restidsvinst är ofta är den enda nyttan som ingår i nyttokalkylen för kollektivtrafikinvesteringar, men i visa fall är det befogat att använda viktade tidsvärden beroende på förhållandet belastning / kapacitet. Att inte modellera dynamiska trängseleffekter kan dock leda till påtagbar underskattning av nyttorna i projekt som primärt handlar om kapacitetshöjning snarare än restidsförkortning. Nyttan av små operationella åtgärder ska inte underskattas. Dessa åtgärder är oftast relativt billiga jämfört med investeringar i ny transportinfrastruktur och stora sociala nyttor kan därför åstadkommas.

No description available.

Sweden is one of the leading countries in traffic safety, but pedestrians are vulnerable compared to other road users. “Vision zero” mission, which means no fatal or serious injury in road traffic system, has been the target of Sweden since 1997. As a result, more efforts should be put to reduce pedestrian accidents. The aim of this study is to contribute to the knowledge on reducing the number of pedestrian accidents of different severity levels in Sweden. First, this study found patterns on Swedish pedestrian accidents involving fatal, serious and moderate injuries by using same variables, then compared identified patterns corresponding to different severity levels. Then, additional patterns of pedestrian accidents involving fatal and serious injuries were assessed by adding additional variables in the clustering analysis. Finally, Swedish-oriented preventive measures were recommended based on the hypotheses on each identified patterns in a systematic way, which gave reference to policy makers in Sweden on the most urgent problems in pedestrian safety. Self-organizing map (SOM) with batch mode was applied in this study for clustering analysis, which has advantages on identifying patterns on pedestrian accidents compared to other methods, including classical linear algorithms and other unsupervised clustering algorithms (hierarchal clustering, k-means clustering and SOM with incremental mode). In addition, a specific set of assessment criteria for clustering solutions was proposed in terms of quality, stability and interpretability. According to the results of clustering solutions, falling was the main reason for serious injuries while collision with vehicles was the main reason for fatal injuries. Middle-aged and old people tended to hurt limbs when falling while children and young males tended to hurt heads. Old people might be vulnerable during daily life or within friendly traffic environment. Potential risk included outdoor activities, careless people during winter and weekend or summer night parties. Lastly, preventive measure could be combined across accidents of different severity levels, since patterns for fatal injuries were partly the same as those for non-fatal-injuries.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to help third-party logistics providers solve the difficulties in implementing a new system for their information related operations. To fulfill this purpose, three research question have been made: 1. What makes the implementation of the information system difficult for third-party logistics providers? 2. What facilitates service transfer/implementation of the information system? 3. What are the guidelines for a successful implementation of an information system for a third-party logistics provider? Method - A case study was conducted with a Swedish freight forwarder company with global presences where empirical data was collected through interviews and document analyses to fulfill the purpose of the paper. Furthermore, to make a theoretical support for the findings, a literature review was carried out. The empirical data and the result of literature review was being compared and analyzed to answer research questions. Findings - The finding has been made in the order of establishing guidelines for third-party logistics providers, especially small-to-medium size enterprises, to make a successful as well as smooth implementation of a new system for information-related operations with the empirical data and literature review result as support. To begin with, a thorough analysis was made upon the characters of the implementation which will address the difficulties. The findings are mainly related to the processes of the implementation as well as the characters of third-party logistics providers that can cause the downforce. Then, since a better understanding of the initiation of the motivation for the organizations to make the implementation can help to make scientific and thorough guidelines, the findings of which will be presented. Lastly, all the data and analysis will be used to make guidelines for the organization regarding the implementation of a new system for their information-related operations. Implications - Different studies within the areas related to the study have been made and the paper has made certain contributions to view them in a different perspective by conducting the study on a TPL company. Additionally, the study suggests that the findings have been conducted to solve one specific case which can be broadly used with the consideration of historical factors as well as customer alignment. Limitations - This study focuses specifically on a case in Sweden. Generalization has been limited due to several variables: national differences, company size and transport services, etc. In addition, the third-party logistics industry has changed rapidly and the subsequent research also has a time limit that the author could not predict. Keywords Supply chain, Third party logistics, logistics, information flow, implementation, IT service management

No description available.

The freight transport industry is crucial for the global economy and a key element of all supply chains and logistics systems. The demand for freight is expected to more than double over the next three decades. Freight transport’s externalities and negative impact on the environment have been highlighted in previous research and reports. At the same time, the latest IPCC (2023) report highlights the urgency to dramatically cut emissions to mitigate the effects on climate change caused by human actions, which also relates to freight transport, which in essence is a result of the design and management of supply chains.   A way of reducing GHG emissions from logistics operations is to implement a variety of environmentally friendly strategies, processes, and activities designed to minimize the environmental impact of such operations. Switching to vehicles powered by zero-emission and non-pollutant technology is one of the proposed strategies to reduce the environmental impact of logistics operations.     Electromobility is foreseen to become one of the main pathways to decarbonize supply chains and logistics operations. However, the transition to electromobility entails that many actors in the supply chain are affected. Two important actors in the transition are the Commercial Vehicle Manufacturers (CVMs), as technology providers, and the hauliers, as technology adopters. The implementation of Heavy-duty Battery Electric Vehicles (HBEVs) in rod freight transport entails that, as technology providers, and the hauliers, as technology adopters, are exposed to a range of challenges   The purpose of the thesis is to describe and explain the challenges of implementing BEVs among Commercial Vehicle Manufacturers (CVMs) and Hauliers. This thesis targets the intersection of electromobility and supply chain management and aims to contribute to the body of research on green logistics by investigating managerial and business-related aspects of the implementation of HBEVs in road freight transports and to shed light on the subject to practitioners outside academia.    The research has been performed through literature reviews and case studies. The case studies include interviews, document studies and observations from two commercial vehicle manufacturers (of which one is a main case and one is a reference case), and eight haulier companies.   The research reveals that the challenges for both CVMs and hauliers relate to Technology, Finance, Market, Organization and Policy. Further, the challenges take different shape depending on the actor’s perspective, for example, a technology-related challenge for the CVMs such as battery capacity, translates to a technology-related challenge for the hauliers in terms of limited range.    Finally, the challenges can be interrelated and might have a reinforcing effect in many cases, which inhibits, even further, the transition to electrified freight transports. For instance, challenges related to technology have a direct impact on operations and finance. The limited range of HBEVs – a technology challenge – results in a less flexible freight vehicle, that requires a more careful planning from the hauliers’ side – operational challenge. The loss of operational flexibility entails that it’s more difficult for the hauliers to accept unplanned transport assignments from transport buyers, which has a direct impact on the haulier’s earning capacity – a financial challenge. / Transportindustrin är avgörande för den globala ekonomin och en viktig del i alla leveranskedjor och logistiksystem. Efterfrågan på godstransporter förväntas mer än fördubblas över de närmaste tre decennierna. Godstransporternas negativa inverkan på miljön har lyfts fram i tidigare forskning och rapporter. Samtidigt understryker den senaste IPCC-rapporten (2023) behovet av att drastiskt minska utsläppen för att mildra effekterna av klimatförändringar som orsakas av mänskliga handlingar. Det gäller även godstransporter, som i huvudsak är ett resultat av utformningen och hanteringen av leveranskedjor.    Ett sätt att minska koldioxidutsläpp från logistikverksamhet är att implementera strategier, processer och aktiviteter utformade för att minimera miljöpåverkan av denna typ av verksamhet. Att övergå till nollutsläppsfordon är en av de föreslagna strategierna för att minska den miljömässiga påverkan av logistikverksamheten.    Elektrifiering förutspås bli ett av huvudspåren för att minska koldioxidutsläpp från leveranskedjor och logistikverksamhet. Emellertid innebär övergången till elektrifiering att många aktörer i leveranskedjan påverkas. Två viktiga aktörer i övergången är fordonstillverkarna (CVMs, engelsk förkortning), som teknikleverantörer, samt åkerierna, som teknikanvändare. Implementeringen av tunga batteridrivna elfordon (HBEVs, engelsk förkortning) i godstransporter innebär att fordonstillverkare och åkerier står inför en rad utmaningar.    Syfte med denna avhandling är att beskriva och förklara utmaningarna med att implementera tunga batteridrivna elfordon för fordonstillverkare och åkerier. Avhandlingen fokuserar på skärningspunkten mellan elektromobilitet och Supply Chain Management, och bidrar till forskningen om grön logistik genom att undersöka lednings- och affärsrelaterade aspekter av implementeringen av tunga batteridrivna elfordon, samt att belysa ämnet för praktiker utanför den akademiska världen.   Forskningen har genomförts genom litteraturstudier och fallstudier. Fallstudierna inkluderar intervjuer, dokumentstudier och observationer från två tillverkare av kommersiella fordon (varav en är ett huvudfall och en är ett referensfall) och åtta åkeriföretag. Forskningen visar att utmaningarna för både fordonstillverkare och åkerier rör teknik, finansiering, marknad, organisation och policy. Utmaningarna tar sig olika uttryck beroende på aktörens perspektiv, till exempel, en teknikrelaterad utmaning för fordonstillverkare, såsom batterikapacitet, blir en teknikrelaterad utmaning för åkerierna i form av begränsad räckvidd.    Slutligen kan utmaningarna vara sammanlänkade och, i många fall, ha en förstärkande effekt vilket ytterligare hämmar övergången till elektrifierade godstransporter. Bland annat har teknikrelaterade utmaningar en direkt inverkan på drift och ekonomi. Exempelvis resulterar den begränsade räckvidden - en teknikrelaterad utmaning - i ett mindre flexibelt fordon, vilket kräver en noggrannare planering från åkeriernas sida - en operativ utmaning. Mindre operativ flexibilitet innebär att det blir svårare för åkerierna att acceptera oplanerade transportuppdrag från transportköpare, vilket har en direkt inverkan på åkeriets intäktskapacitet - en finansiell utmaning.