Baigiamajame magistro darbe nagrinėjamos krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą geležinkelių transportu problemos, įvairių autorių nuomonė šia tema. Išnagrinėta esama krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą jūrų ir geležinkelių transportu situacija ir dėl to atsirandančios problemos, išanalizuotos esamos geležinkelių transporto panaudojimo galimybės tokių krovinių vežimo srityje. Baigiamajame darbe skaičiuojamas geležinkelio linijų, esančių tarp Kinijos ir Europos, krovinių metinis pralaidumas, nustatomos mažiausią pajėgumą turinčios vietos, galimi vežti srautai lyginami su esamais jūrų transporto srautais. Nustatomas šių pajėgumų didinimo planas, apskaičiuojamas jam reikalingas investicijų poreikis. Vertinant projekto investicijų efektyvumą, apskaičiuojama projekto dabartinė grynoji vertė, vidinė pelno norma, investicijų rentabilumo indeksas ir atsipirkimo laikas. Taip pat atliekamas šio projekto ekonominis įvertinimas, apskaičiuojant finansinę naudą, kurią patirs Europoje esantys krovinių gavėjai dėl sutrumpėjusio krovinių pristatymo laiko, bei prognozuojamą naudą Lietuvai dėl sukurtų naujų darbo vietų ir papildomų mokesčių į biudžetą. Išnagrinėjus teorinius ir praktinius krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą geležinkelių transportu aspektus, pateikiamos baigiamojo darbo išvados ir pasiūlymai. / The final master thesis analyses the problems and scientific literature on freight shipment by rail from China to Europe. The work contains the analysis of the current situation and emerging problems of freight shipment by sea and rail from China to Europe. It also includes an investigation of railway infrastructure abilities to manage these carriages. The work contains the calculation of cargo throughput of railway lines between China and Europe. It also determines the weakest links in these lines. In addition, the possible cargo turnover is compared with sea freight turnover. After this, the project of throughput increasing is taken, including the calculation of desirable investment. Analyzing the effectiveness of this investment project, net present value, internal return rate and investment profitableness index are calculated. The analysis also includes economical assessment, identifying financial benefit to freight receivers in Europe, which appears from saved time of cargo distribution from China. What is more, the benefit Lithuania gets from new workplaces and additional budget income is discussed. Having analyzed the theoretical and practical aspects of freight shipment by rail from China to Europe, the conclusions and proposals are presented.

Transportation is one of the most frequent problems in the business world. The major feature of the problem is that there are many warehouses and many delivery places. The objective of solving this problem is to find the amount of goods that should be sent from each warehouse to each customer while minimizing cost.Unfortunately, understanding the process and interpreting the results are not easy tasks. The method is very complex. The result is in the form of a table. We might say that it is not a friendly user-interface.In this thesis, we will create an application which uses a window as an interface, and uses minimal storage.Borland C++ v.4.0 is chosen to handle the implementation, and Borland Object Windows (class) Library for C++ v.2.0, OWL, is used for the interface. Therefore, this application operates on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, but not on DOS. / Department of Computer Science

This dissertation examines the resiliency, efficiency, and environmental impact of barge shipments within the upper Ohio River basin, contrasting findings relevant to this region with assumptions and findings of broader national studies and providing alternative assessment methods. The unique attributes of this region’s inland waterways infrastructure and usage patterns are dominated by the shipment of coal; mines and powerplants with heavy and inflexible dependence on barge shipments; and the constrictions of the waterway infrastructure. Acknowledging these attributes allows for a more accurate assessment in the future of risks due to infrastructure failure and opportunities for efficiency gains. Research goals were set in three major areas: assessing the impact of an extended loss of commercial river navigation due to catastrophic infrastructure failure; assessing current and potential new efficiency metrics for inland waterways freight movement, both in terms of vessel movements and the infrastructure itself; and quantifying and assessing air emissions from regional commercial river traffic. The first research goal was to assess the impact of an extended loss of commercial river navigation due to catastrophic infrastructure failure. The objectives of this research goal were to develop a failure scenario; to develop methodologies to identify at-risk commodity shipments, feasible alternate modes of transportation, supply chain options, and shipping costs; and to develop a methodology to assess the potential closure of facilities impacted by infrastructure failure. A hypothetical failure scenario was assessed for a year-long closure of the Monongahela River between Charleroi and Elizabeth in 2010. For this scenario, the potentially displaced volume of coal shipments from mines to powerplants for a hypothetical river shutdown in 2010 was estimated at 7.0 million tons. The resilience of the impacted facilities, the feasibility of their shipping alternatives, and their ability to re-organize into new markets were assessed, showing heavy predicted impacts for facilities within the hypothetical failure zone, minimal impacts on facilities located below the failure zone, and mixed impacts above the failure zone that depend on facility-specific shipping mode alternatives. Lost revenues were estimated for facilities that close due to an inability to adapt, as well as the replacement cost of towboats and barges trapped by a catastrophic and sudden failure. The aggregate costs to these facilities as a result of a year-long closure in 2010 were estimated at $0.56-1.7 billion. The second research goal was to assess commonly used and potential new efficiency metrics for the inland waterways. Objectives of this goal included the development of methodologies to identify, characterize, and differentiate between vessel and commodity trips; to assess efficiency metrics currently used by USACE and develop improved metrics; and to conduct stochastic time studies of commodity trips to quantify efficiency gains from infrastructure improvements. The vessel and commodity trip analyses provide a unique assessment of the inefficiencies created by the infrastructure bottlenecks within the region. Data from USACE’s Lock Performance Monitoring System and the Energy Information Administration’s Survey 923 were used to characterize and rank the vessel and commodity trips made in 2010 in terms of frequency, tonnage, and ton-miles. Such rankings can be used to prioritize optimization projects and to assess usage patterns. The analyses of various efficiency measures commonly used for the inland waterways were conducted in light of the particular constraints of operation within the upper Ohio River basin. These upriver locks differ in size, requiring vessel operators to optimize the type and configuration of barges used within the region, and causing the regional profile to differ from fleet and flotilla profiles generated at a national level or for other regions. Consideration of these differences allows for more accurate analysis of usage patterns, with implications for efficiency considerations of time and fuel consumption. Stochastic modeling of historical usage patterns allows for the comparison of time requirements with different flotilla configurations and with different infrastructure configurations. A scenario analysis on a typical regional shipment between a coal mine and powerplant was used to demonstrate the method. Results show that completion of a long delayed lock reconstruction project will reduce the time required, and thus the cost and fuel, to move commodities across the region. The savings for a 15-jumbo barge tow moving 200 miles across the study area was estimated to be 17% as a result of completion of the Lower Mon Project. The third research goal was to quantify and assess the regional impact of commercial river traffic on air quality. The specific objectives of this goal were to develop a methodology for calculating emission loadings; and to develop a methodology to assess the impact of vessel emissions on regional air monitors. An estimation of particulate emissions from the vessels’ diesel engines is presented, showing total releases of PM2.5 to be about 360 tons in 2010 across 600 river miles of the upper Ohio River basin, on the same order of magnitude as the major point source releases reported in Allegheny County, and about 25% of releases from a typical 1,700 MW regional powerplant. A screening analysis estimates PM2.5 concentrations attributable from towboats passing through the Liberty-Clairton non-attainment region, predicting that these emission levels would be orders of magnitude below the detection limits of the region’s air monitors, and would be dwarfed by the point source impacting those monitors.

In the distribution network of a large retailer, shipments can either be transported by the retailer's own trucks or outsourced to third-party logistics (3PL) companies. In the former case, shipments are consolidated and transported from their origins through an intermediate facility, namely a crossdock. At a crossdock, shipments are unloaded, sorted, re-consolidated, loaded and transported to their destinations. The consolidation process offers economies of scale that reduce the transportation costs. At the same time, it increases travel distances and incurs handling costs at a crossdock. For this reason, consolidation is uneconomic for a shipment in which origin and destination are located close to one other, especially through a distant crossdock. It is cheaper to outsource transportation of such a shipment to 3PL companies. This shipping decision raises a series of questions. Should a shipment be consolidated through a crossdock or outsourced to 3PL companies? How do facility locations, the operational cost of a crossdock and mode of shipments influence the shipping decision? Can the robustness and potential growth of a crossdock be measured? How does outsourcing affect the robustness and potential growth of a crossdock? We formulate a strategic model of a retailer's distribution network as an economic trade-off between consolidated shipments through a crossdock and outsourced shipments to 3PL companies. We study the locus of facility locations where the costs of a consolidated shipment and an outsourced shipment are equal and discover that the trade-off can be modeled by classical geometric curves, particularly an ellipse, a hyperbola, a limacon and a Cartesian oval. These curves can be developed into a preliminary routing and locating tool. We also observe interesting connections between the single hub crossdocking network and other fields of geometric study, such as Voronoi diagrams and geometric inversion. In addition, the area bounded by these curves represents the likelihood in which a particular shipment is consolidated through a crossdock. We expand this concept to multiple vendor-store pairs and suggest an index that measures robustness and potential growth of a particular crossdock. This asymptotic-probability index explains economic driving factors of consolidation and outsourcing. Although the derivation of the index is limited by the dimension and spatial distribution of facilities, its numerical value can be determined by a computer simulation. Therefore, we use Monte Carlo simulation to compute the proposed index to explain the outsourcing and the interaction between TL threshold0.1 and mode of shipments. The analysis and computer simulation suggest that outsourcing may cause an adverse effect in a single hub crossdocking network, resulting in the abrupt reduction of consolidated shipments in the network. Furthermore, we propose transportation planning to alleviate this effect and compare them to the optimal allocation. The routing and locating application of the model is illustrated using the Home Depot distribution network. Our model predicts 5.5% and additional 1.0% savings in transportation cost by re-allocation of shipments and re-location of crossdocks, respectively. The empirical study shows that the adverse effect of outsourcing can be eliminated by limiting the number of crossdocks used by each store.

Thesis (MComm)--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-196). Also available online.

abstract: This thesis develops a low-investment marketing strategy that allows low-to-mid level farmers extend their commercialization reach by strategically sending containers of fresh produce items to secondary markets that present temporary arbitrage opportunities. The methodology aims at identifying time windows of opportunity in which the price differential between two markets create an arbitrage opportunity for a transaction; a transaction involves buying a fresh produce item at a base market, and then shipping and selling it at secondary market price. A decision-making tool is developed that gauges the individual arbitrage opportunities and determines the specific price differential (or threshold level) that is most beneficial to the farmer under particular market conditions. For this purpose, two approaches are developed; a pragmatic approach that uses historic price information of the products in order to find the optimal price differential that maximizes earnings, and a theoretical one, which optimizes an expected profit model of the shipments to identify this optimal threshold. This thesis also develops risk management strategies that further reduce profit variability during a particular two-market transaction. In this case, financial engineering concepts are used to determine a shipment configuration strategy that minimizes the overall variability of the profits. For this, a Markowitz model is developed to determine the weight assignation of each component for a particular shipment. Based on the results of the analysis, it is deemed possible to formulate a shipment policy that not only increases the farmer's commercialization reach, but also produces profitable operations. In general, the observed rates of return under a pragmatic and theoretical approach hovered between 0.072 and 0.616 within important two-market structures. Secondly, it is demonstrated that the level of return and risk can be manipulated by varying the strictness of the shipping policy to meet the overall objectives of the decision-maker. Finally, it was found that one can minimize the risk of a particular two-market transaction by strategically grouping the product shipments. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Industrial Engineering 2011

This study is designed to gain a better understanding of the decision process of freight shippers who use commercial truckers. Pursuant to this study, it is possible to gather some insights into the phenomenon of the selection of a trucking company to transport goods. Planning is essential to the attainment of goals in any type of firm, and that is especially true in the volatile environment of commercial trucking. Development of the external environment of trucking is prerequisite to the planning process and essential to the attainment of goals. The external environment of a trucking firm is generally represented by economic, social, and political influences, which extend specifically to the nature and tendencies of its markets, i.e., the shippers.

In the recent years, crowdfunding (a phenomenon where individuals collectively contribute money to back different goals and projects through the internet) has been gaining a lot of attention especially for its socio-economic impact. This dissertation explores this phenomenon in three distinct but related essays. The first essay explores the nature and dynamics of backers’ contributions and uses the insights generated to develop a forecasting model that can predict crowdfunding campaign outcomes. The second essay investigates how creators’ crowdfunding campaign design decisions impact their funding and post-funding outcomes. Interestingly, the essay highlights that certain crowdfunding campaign design decisions have differential effects on both funding and post-funding phases and this has implications for creators, backers, and crowdfunding platform owners. Finally, the third essay investigates whether creators’ post-funding relations-building efforts with backers matter and how such relations-building efforts might impact the performance of their subsequent crowdfunding campaign. In general, this dissertation not only increases our understanding of the crowdfunding phenomenon across the funding and post-funding phases, it also provides insights and tools that can help stakeholders maximize the benefits accruable to them when they engage in crowdfunding.