This dissertation contains two topics in operations research. The first topic is to design a distribution network to facilitate the repeated movement of shipments from many origins to many destinations. A method is developed to estimate transportation costs as a function of the number of terminals and moreover to determine the best number of terminals. The second topic is to study dynamics of a buyer's behavior when the buyer can buy goods through both option contracts and a spot market and the buyer attempts to learn the probability distribution of the spot price. The buyer estimates the spot price distribution as though it is exogenous. However, the spot price distribution is not exogenous but is endogenous because it is affected by the buyer's decision regarding option purchases.

Focused transit hazard evaluations of distribution environments have become increasingly important in the recent past. This is due to the realization by businesses such as those in China (Baird et.al.,2004) that pack design optimization can result in reduction of packaging and other related costs, ensuring safe delivery of products as well as enabling companies to comply with global statutory obligations that demand packaging waste reduction via optimal packaging of goods. This work involved focused evaluation of the distribution hazards in truck transport within the bulk packed tea supply chain in Kenya as a basis for establishment of a pre-shipment protocol for packaged goods in order to optimize package designs and protect the physical quality of tea in transit. The parameters addressed included vibrations, shock, and environmental conditions of temperature and relative humidity. The research further examined how above transit conditions may affect important black tea physical quality parameters of density, particle size distribution, colour, and particle morphology. The work also formulated a new a pre-shipment testing protocol for tea (and other goods) moved within this supply channel thus allowing businesses to optimize their packaging designs. Furthermore, such pre-shipment protocols would help in predicting possible failure in transit. The Lasmont’s Saver model 3x90 transit data measuring unit mounted on the truck bed was used to collect transit data while a programmable electrodynamics vibration table was used to simulate the measured transit conditions. Using the specially fabricated rig apparatus for the experiment, analysis of changes of the tea physical properties of particle size distribution, bulk, tapped and compact densities as well as particle morphology and colour were investigated. The results showed that truck transport transit conditions experienced in the Kenyan roads with a composite spectrum of 1.358 (Grms) for the routes measured are more severe than the test standards set by both American Standard Testing Methods (ASTM) and International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) for truck transport conditions of 0.242 and 0,519 (Grms) respectively. This shows Kenyan roads compared to those where both ASTM and ISTA data was derived from are poorer and further confirms that both ASTM and ISTA standard tests may not be appropriate for use in designing optimal packaging for the Kenyan distribution environment. In addition, vibration intensities experienced were relatively higher than average recorded from other similar studies carried out in other parts of the world such as Brazil (0.628 Grms), USA(maximum 0.89 Grms), Spain (0.194Grms) and Indian highways (0.161 Grms). The work revealed how poor Kenyan roads are and that they would lead to damage of delicate physical qualities of tea including particle size distribution for each grade of tea, particle morphology and density unless the right packaging is used. This therefore underpins the importance of carrying out focused pre-shipment testing for a given distribution environment as general test procedures will not allow optimization of packaging designs. Due to the prevailing poor road conditions in Kenya as shown earlier by relatively high vibration and shock impacts, results showed that these hazards together with load compression affected the tea particle integrity in transit leading to breakage of larger tea particles to give rise to smaller particles unless adequate protective distribution packaging has been given due consideration. Equally, particle density as well as the particle surface morphology was affected resulting in undesirable impact on tea physical quality. Consistency in density of tea is an important aspect for the blenders of bulk tea since packing machines often operate within defined density limits. Compressive forces within the pallet load led to the crushing of larger tea particles into smaller ones, thus undermining the desirable black colour tea leaving it greyish which is considered in the tea trade as poor tea quality. In addition, the results confirmed that the effect of compression load on the physical tea quality was more severe than the vibration/shock impact alone. Moreover, the change in physical quality was related to the transit time (vibration period) up to maximum equilibrium level. Density of tea increased with compression load up to a maximum of 350g. The same, however, declined at 400g static load due to resonance conditions of the simulation assembly. Tea morphology measurements indicated that the initial rounded shape of the tea particles gradually changed to an elongated shape with rugged surface. This had an effect of not only damaging the desired black colour but also altered the flow properties of the tea which is an important aspect for bulk tea buyers during their subsequent handling activities of blending and packaging. A new relationship called compact density and compact ratio was established that related elevated tea density in transit due to ‘jamming’ of tea particles upon application of static load pressure on the tea at the lower levels of the pallet load. In addition, a correlation of density against tea powder “stain” travel within the test container containing tea particles, further confirmed that force impulses from the static load on top of tea particles was being transmitted perpendicular down to the bottom of the pallet load. The correlation of both the distance moved by the static load inside the tea container and tea powder “stain” column height on the test tube below the static load with the compact density of tea, brought out further empirical data that could be used by researchers to accurately predict the tea density from both the above parameters. The research further revealed that compressive forces on the tea particles at lower levels of the pallet load had more impact on the damage of tea particles compared to vibration/shock impacts. Finally, there is need for the existing packaging standards for bulk packed black tea to be revised in the light of the newly developed pre-shipment testing protocols from this research.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MSc (Industrial Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / unrestricted

The first part of this project focused on evaluating aspects of the environmental management practices of Texas chemical industries, particularly waste generation and management of the data related to these processes. The waste generation data included Texas notifications required to track wastes. The next phase consisted of characterizing industrial waste disposal methods, waste container management, and transportation including an overview of required documentation for each activity. This led to identification of issues encountered from inefficient recordkeeping, ineffective internal communication, or inadequate environmental management systems. The result of an ineffective hazardous waste data management program can be fines, damage to the environment, and even adverse impacts on worker health and safety. For example, for the situations outlined in this document, violations could have resulted in penalties totaling $550,000 per day. This led to an effort to evaluate and develop solutions needed to develop a robust management system. The goal was to provide an operating and hazardous waste management program which optimally resulted in “zero findings” by the state regulatory agency. This would be achieved through personal experiences of this environmental engineer while working at a chemical plant augmented by information obtained through observations of others at the facility and a review of published documentation. This document focuses on the redesign and automation of an ineffective, manual environmental management system by making modifications and enhancements with a focus on effective management of various waste media. The criteria used for determining system optimization includes regulatory compliance and noncompliance penalties, internal communication time, onsite storage accumulation time exceedances, recordkeeping efficiency, number of lost waste containers, and time needed to make waste classifications. Optimization is verified against other alternatives by comparing instances and severity of noncompliance with state and federal regulations. The result was a total environmental management system optimized in a way that ensured compliance and achieved the goal of eliminating violations. It also reduced cost, allowed automated data entry, supported rapid asset location and helped track performance.

This research addresses fleet-sizing for reusable containers that are used for protection, transportation, and storage of parts between a component plant and assembly plant. These reusable containers are often expensive and occupy a large amount of storage space when empty and full. Having a large container fleet comes with higher acquisition, maintenance, and storage costs, but decreases production down time caused by the lack of containers needed for storage. A quantitative model of these trade-offs will permit decision makers to maintain desired production levels at minimum cost. In this dissertation, the relationship between container fleet size and production down time caused by container shortages is researched. Utilizing both theoretical and empirical approaches, two analytical models that include relevant operational parameters and stochastic components are developed. The first is a container fleet sizing model, and the second model estimates production stoppages as a function of container fleet size. The formulas are shown to be accurate and provide decision makers with the tools to better plan and manage specific applications. The formulas also provide general insight into the factors that affect container fleet size and production stoppage due to container shortages. / Graduation date: 2012

This dissertation addresses problems arising in freight routing and scheduling where full truckload (FTL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers are used to serve transportation needs. Each of the problems investigated in this dissertation tries to optimize/maximize consolidation to decrease system transportation costs by (1) carefully choosing the timing and path of freight and/or (2) introducing consolidation points. Approaches are proposed that enable effective planning and operation of freight routing and scheduling for large-scale transportation networks. Chapter 2 presents solution approaches for a shipper pickup and delivery planning problem faced by many large retailers to move freight from suppliers to distribution centers. Each shipment is moved either direct via a LTL carrier or possibly consolidated with other shipments and moved by one or two FTL routes. When using a FTL carrier, the shipper takes advantage of contracted lane rates that establish prices per mile for a truck operated between two locations that are significantly less than the comparable LTL price for shipping a full truckload. Consolidated FTL routes may each visit multiple shipment origins (supplier locations) and/or destinations (distribution center locations). Additionally, FTL routes may move shipments through a single crossdock facility en route. The challenge in this planning problem is to exploit as much as possible negotiated truckload lane rates and to judiciously make use of routes through crossdock facilities to consolidate shipments. The primary contributions of this section are that (1) an interesting new problem variant is introduced to the field of transportation and logistics that is important in practice and (2) the solution approach demonstrates that exploiting knowledge of the problem and solution structure to cleverly select subsets of path variables for evaluation during each iteration of an integer programming based local search heuristic is effective on path-based routing models. Chapter 3 evaluates how to route each customer shipment through a sequence of transfer terminals in a LTL carrier network. At each terminal stop, a shipment is unloaded from an inbound trailer and reloaded onto an outbound trailer. A load plan determines the specific sequence of terminal transfers to be used for freight moving between each origin and destination. The design of the load plan determines the linehaul transportation and handling costs required to serve customers. We develop an improved very large-scale neighborhood search heuristic for solving an integer programming model for load plan design. The main contributions of this section include (1) the investigation of the pros and cons of optimizing system-wide into a single destination versus optimizing freight for all destinations in a small region, and (2) a solution approach that can find load plans with costs 6 to 7\% lower than those used in practice, and can find 2.5 to 5\% additional cost savings using the same time budget when compared to an approach optimizing system-wide into a single destination. Chapter 4 addresses a strategic planning problem that extends the load plan design problem to consider terminal roles. We investigate two-stage approaches that first identify the set of transfer terminals and then develop the corresponding load plan. Computational results compare the terminals chosen as transfer facilities from the proposed integer programming based local search method with a traditional hub location formulation and a simple facility location formulation to depict the benefits gained from modeling additional information. The key contributions of this section are (1) the introduction of a new hub location problem variant incorporating freight dispatch timing and trailer transportation cost characteristics found in the LTL trucking industry and (2) a solution approach utilizing IP-based local search that demonstrates the importance of incorporating freight dispatch timing. Finally, Chapter 5 summarizes the main conclusions from this dissertation and discusses directions for further research.

A load plan specifies how freight is routed through a linehaul terminal network operated by a less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier. Determining the design of the load plan is critical to effective operations of such carriers. This dissertation makes contributions in modeling and algorithm design for three problems in LTL load plan design: (1) Refined execution cost estimation. Existing load plan design models use approximations that ignore important facts such as the nonlinearity of transportation costs with respect to the number of trailers, and empty travel beyond what is required for trailer balance that results from driver rules. We develop models that more accurately capture key operations of LTL carriers and produce accurate operational execution costs estimates; (2) Dynamic load planning. Load plans are traditionally revised infrequently by LTL carriers due to the difficulty of solving the associated optimization problem. Technological advances have now enabled carriers to consider daily load plan updates. We develop technologies that efficiently and effectively adjust a nominal load plan for a given day based on the actual freight to be served by the carrier. We present an integer programming based local search procedure, and a greedy randomized adaptive search heuristic; and (3) Stochastic load plan design. Load plan design models commonly represent origin-destination freight volumes using average demands, which do not describe freight volume fluctuations. We investigate load plan design models that explicitly utilize information on freight volume uncertainty and design load plans that most cost-effectively deal with varying freight volumes and lead to the lowest expected cost. We present a Sample Average Approximation approach and a variant of the method for solving the stochastic integer programming formulations.

Disruptions to the freight transportation system are costly due to freight's critical relationship to economic productivity. This research will analyze the current methods of estimating the economic impacts of disruptions to the freight transportation system. A review of existing literature will be conducted with the intent of finding methods that address different types of disruptions and impacts. Due to varying economic scopes and disruptions studied, the results will likely indicate a broad range of methodologies and trends. The results will be used to better understand the different approaches taken when quantifying the economic impacts of disruptions and therefore enable more informed policy, regulation and investment.

Seaborne container shipping plays a major and important role in the world transportation system and the global supply chain. Shipping lines have designed their product offering to shippers around providing regular calls at designated ports. This works well for most firms that operate on a just-in-time philosophy. The real costs of trade – the transport and other costs of doing business internationally – are important determinants of a country’s ability to participate fully in the world economy. This is an important indicator for port performance in a globalised economy; therefore, any inefficiency that increases costs must be addressed. This means that ports have to ensure very high productivity and efficiency levels so that ships have a quick turnaround. Clark et al., (2002) conclude that a 50% improvement in port efficiency can reduce shipping costs by about 12%. The general question that is studied in this research is: How can the Marine Services within the Port of Durban assist in reducing ship turnaround times? This study seeks to determine what role the marine services plays in ship turnaround. The analysis in this study will be to determine the source of delays and ways to improve on efficiency. The resultant improvement in efficiency should lead to a possible reduction in shipping costs. The Market Demand Strategy employed by Transnet in 2012 must be implemented in such a manner that it must not only address the current infrastructural backlogs but it must also endeavour to alleviate several logistic chain bottlenecks that tend to constrain the economy. When analysing 2010-2011 a worrying trend emerges that the average waiting times for ships at anchor has increased significantly and the time on the berth has also increased significantly despite a reduction in the number of ships calling to the port. This is partly due to the fact that much larger ships now arriving at the port and more crucially are working a larger number of containers per port call. However, there is still concern about the operational efficiency of the terminals in the port (Pier One and Durban Container Terminal). The Marine Operations service times have also increased marginally 1.23% (0.98 hours) but this is due to longer time required for berthing and sailing of larger ships. This study has clearly shown that the Marine Operations within the Port of Durban do not significantly impact on overall ship turnaround time. However, there are areas of improvement that can be implemented to ensure high service levels within the port. By increasing the tug fleet and ensuring adequate human resources, the service offering can immediately be improved. Extremely lengthy anchorage waiting times and high berth occupancy impact negatively on ship-owners, shippers, and the economy at large. The Port Authority must interrogate these areas to understand clearly what is driving these extended times and determine strategies and performance measures to mitigate these. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

1933年(昭和8年)日本因全球經濟大蕭條引發「昭和農業恐慌」，加上帝國內部米穀供應嚴重過剩，米價大幅滑落，促使日本政府加強米榖方面的各項統制措施。本文試圖由1933年開始至1945年日本戰敗為止，日本政府為因應米穀供應過剩或者不足所採取的各項統制措施，及其對殖民地臺灣所產生的影響。日本政府實施之米穀統制政策，對臺灣米穀生產造成影響者，如1933年實施的「米穀統制法」、1936年的「米穀自治管理法」、1939年於臺灣內部實施的「臺灣米穀移出管理令」、1942年7月1日施行的「食糧管理法臺灣施行令」、1943年底的「臺灣食糧管理令」、還有1944年年中推行的「米穀增產及供出獎勵相關特別措施」等。由這些米穀統制法令及措施，可以了解日本的臺灣總督府用盡一切方法，就是為了使其最重要的民生主食「稻米」的生產及供應，能達到「自給自足」的目標。臺灣，作為日本殖民帝國下的一員，為配合帝國整體米穀供需穩定，對於「看天吃飯」的米穀生產，悲願地追求其自足目標。臺灣蓬萊米生產的擴大與臺日米價間的互動，連帶影響臺灣糖價及其他農作物的生產，並可藉此了解日本與臺灣之間，因稻米生產而衍生出的統制生產架構。 / In 1933, the world economic recession (the Great Depression) caused the imperial Japan into the so called 「Showa Agricultural Panic」 and made the imperial internal rice supply overwhelmingly surplus. Those　made the price of rice in Japan at that time fallen considerably, prompting the Japanese government to strengthen the rice control policies.This article, from 1933 to 1945, tries to explain the impacts of the Japanese government's various rice control policies which responded to the rice oversupply or insufficient upon the colonial Taiwan. The rice control policies Japanese government implemented made great influence upon Taiwan's rice production, such as in 1933, the enactment of the "Rice Control Law" ; in 1936, the enactment of the " Rice Self-management Law " ; in 1939, only in Taiwan enacted, the" Taiwan Rice Shipment Administration Order " ; in July 1 1942," The Staple Food Control Act's Taiwan Enforcement Order ” ; the end of 1943, “ Taiwan's Staple Food Control Administration Order ”; and promulgated in mid-1944 “Special Measures on Enhancing Rice Production and Awarding Shipment ",etc.Through those rice control laws and measures, we can understand the Japanese rulers exhausted to make people's livelihood, the production and supply of the most important staple food "rice", could achieve the goal of “self-sufficiency ".Taiwan, as one part of the Japanese colonial Empire, had to cooperate with the whole Empire’s rice supply and demand as stable as possible. Regarding the rice production which depends on the weather, Taiwan like Japan vows to pursue the goal of “self-sufficiency” with the earnest wish. The expansion of production of the Taiwan Formosan rice (Penglai rice) and the interaction of rice prices between the Taiwan and Japan influenced the Taiwan's sugar price and the production of other crops. Therefore, we can understand the control production structure caused by the rice production between Japan and Taiwan.