Hasil untuk "Shipment of goods. Delivery of goods"

Esraa O. Zayed, Marwan Hatem

Background: Blockchain technology (BCT) is widely recognised for its potential to transform supply chain (SC) operations by enhancing SC transparency, hence fostering trust among SC partners. However, most empirical research has explored its direct impact through conceptual and causal models, while limited studies have explored how SC professionals themselves perceive the role of BCT in strengthening SC transparency and trust among SC partners, especially within emerging economies. Objectives: This study explores the perceptions of SC professionals regarding BCT technology, SC transparency and trust. The focus is on understanding how practitioners interpret the relational value of BCT in the context of emerging economies, with Egypt serving as a representative case. Method: This study employs an exploratory quantitative research approach through a quantitative method that utilises surveys to collect data from 63 SC professionals working in organisations operating in Egypt. Results: Findings confirm that professionals perceive BCT as a tool that positively influences both SC trust and SC transparency, with SC transparency partially mediating the relationship between BCT and trust. However, SC transparency alone does not fully explain trust-building, highlighting the importance of other BCT features such as immutability, traceability and smart contracts. Conclusion: This study reveals that SC professionals in emerging economies perceive BCT as a multifaceted trust-enabling mechanism, operating through SC transparency and other technological affordances. Contribution: By capturing practitioners’ perceptions, this study offers exploratory observations about the perceived relationship among BCT, SC transparency and trust, offering evidence-based understanding from an emerging economy perspective. The findings inform both academics and managers on how BCT’s perceived benefits can shape future trust-oriented SC practices.

Ming-Jiu Hwang, Ya-Pei Huang

The Asian region has become the world's manufacturing hub due to its cost advantages, driving the development of container transportation. Recently, enterprises have favored Southeast Asia for its demographic dividend and geographical benefits. The relationships between ports are complex, and their roles are evolving. This study introduces a container port and network analysis model to explore the features of container ports and networks in Southeast Asia. Using actual route and port data, it proposes three performance indicators: Annualized Slot Capacity (ASC), Equipment Utilization, and Terminal Productivity. Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) are used to develop a suitable port connectivity indicator for Southeast Asia, analyzing changes from 2020 to 2022. The study also categorizes and analyzes the characteristics of the Southeast Asian shipping network based on vessel types and includes Kaohsiung Port in the analysis for a comprehensive comparison. The findings show that the proposed port connectivity ranking differs from the LSCI, which focuses on traffic flow, due to differing indicator aspects. Some ports excel in specific networks based on vessel types. From 2020 to 2022, Vietnamese ports showed steady growth in regional networks, while Kaohsiung Port declined, needing to enhance regional cooperation and competitiveness.

Bahram Adrangi, Saman Hatamerad, Madhuparna Kolay et al.

The objective of this study is to analyze the response of firm value, represented by the Tobin's Q (Q) for a group of twelve U.S. durable goods producers to uncertainties in the US Economy. The results, based on an estimated panel quantile regressions (PQR) and panel vector autoregressive MIDAS model (PVM), show that Q for these firms reacts negatively to the positive shocks to the current ratio, and debt-to-asset ratio and positively to operating income after depreciation and the quick ratio in most quantiles. The Q of the firms under study reacts negatively to the economic policy uncertainty, risk of recession, and inflationary expectation, but positively to consumer confidence in most quantiles of its distribution. Finally, Granger causality tests confirm that the uncertainty indicators considered in the study are significant predictors of changes in the value of these companies as reflected by Q.

Yishen Jiang, Xin Wang, Wenqiang Zhu et al.

The evolutionary mechanisms of cooperative behavior represent a fundamental topic in complex systems and evolutionary dynamics. Real-world collective interactions, particularly in multi-agent systems, are often characterized by behavior-dependent mechanism switching where the environmental state is endogenously shaped by group strategies. However, existing models typically treat such environmental variations as static stochasticity and neglect the closed-loop feedback between environmental states and cooperative behaviors. Here, we introduce a dynamic environmental feedback mechanism into a nonlinear public goods game framework to establish a coevolutionary model that couples environmental states and individual cooperative strategies. Our results demonstrate that the interplay among environmental feedback, nonlinear effects, and environmental randomness can drive the system toward a wide variety of steady-state structures, including full defection, full cooperation, stable coexistence, and periodic limit cycles. Further analysis reveals that asymmetric nonlinear parameters and environmental feedback rates exert significant regulatory effects on cooperation levels and system dynamics. This study not only enriches the theoretical framework of evolutionary game theory but also provides a foundation for modeling environmental feedback loops in scenarios ranging from ecological management to the design of cooperative mechanisms in autonomous systems.

Kjetil Fagerholt, Frank Meisel

Mandla Mvubu, Micheline J. Naude

Background: Digital transformation (DT) is key for service providers in the logistics industry to achieve or retain a sustainable competitive advantage. However, for many third-party logistics (3PLs) in South Africa, implementing DT remains a challenge. Objectives: To explore the challenges that hinder the implementation of DT and to present the best practices that are important for achieving success in DT among South African logistics service providers. Method: This study was exploratory and descriptive. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of 10 managers employed by South African 3PLs companies. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, which involved manually coding the findings, the organisation of these ‘codes’ into related areas to construct ‘descriptive’ themes and the development of ‘analytical’ themes. Results: The challenges and best practices of DT implementation centre around leadership and strategic alignment, technological integration and innovation, data management and cybersecurity, and resource optimisation and cost management. Conclusion: Substantial challenges and best practices associated with DT implementation in the logistics sector were identified. Contribution: The significance of the study lies in examining DT through the lens of 3PLs providers in South Africa, a segment not conventionally associated with innovation. The outcomes contribute to academic research and industry practice. Firstly, the findings bridge a critical gap in the existing literature, providing insight into previously unexplored DT challenges and best practices. Secondly, this study provides valuable insights into key areas, offering practical guidance for industry practitioners.

Ting Ling, Zhang Li, Minyu Feng et al.

It is a challenging task to reach global cooperation among self-interested agents, which often requires sophisticated design or usage of incentives. For example, we may apply supervisors or referees who are able to detect and punish selfishness. As a response, defectors may offer bribes for corrupt referees to remain hidden, hence generating a new conflict among supervisors. By using the interdependent network approach, we model the key element of the coevolution between strategy and judgment. In a game layer, agents play public goods game by using one of the two major strategies of a social dilemma. In a monitoring layer, supervisors follow the strategy change and may alter the income of competitors. Fair referees punish defectors while corrupt referees remain silent for a bribe. Importantly, there is a learning process not only among players but also among referees. Our results suggest that large fines and bribes boost the emergence of cooperation by significantly reducing the phase transition threshold between the pure defection state and the mixed solution where competing strategies coexist. Interestingly, the presence of bribes could be as harmful for defectors as the usage of harsh fines. The explanation of this system behavior is based on a strong correlation between cooperators and fair referees, which is cemented via overlapping clusters in both layers.

Gui Zhang, Yichao Yao, Ziyan Zeng et al.

Reputation and punishment are significant guidelines for regulating individual behavior in human society, and those with a good reputation are more likely to be imitated by others. In addition, society imposes varying degrees of punishment for behaviors that harm the interests of groups with different reputations. However, conventional pairwise interaction rules and the punishment mechanism overlook this aspect. Building on this observation, this paper enhances a spatial public goods game in two key ways: 1) We set a reputation threshold and use punishment to regulate the defection behavior of players in low-reputation groups while allowing defection behavior in high-reputation game groups. 2) Differently from pairwise interaction rules, we combine reputation and payoff as the fitness of individuals to ensure that players with both high payoff and reputation have a higher chance of being imitated. Through simulations, we find that a higher reputation threshold, combined with a stringent punishment environment, can substantially enhance the level of cooperation within the population. This mechanism provides deeper insight into the widespread phenomenon of cooperation that emerges among individuals.

Seyedvahid Vakili, Fabio Ballini, Alessandro Schönborn et al.

Abstract The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has adopted the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) and the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) as short term measures for decarbonisation of the shipping industry; the IMO also made the collection of relevant data and associated reporting of the indicator mandatory from January 2023. However, many existing ships do not meet the EEXI and CII “targets” and cannot invest in other technologies to meet the relevant requirements. Given the various barriers to energy efficiency, the application of slow steaming may be a measure to effectively meet EEXI and CII requirements. A qualitative systematic literature review was conducted on the potential macroeconomic and social impacts of slow steaming on states, with a special focus on Small Island Development States and Least Developed Countries, when used as the primary modality of reducing GHG emissions from shipping. This effort includes peer-reviewed studies and studies from the gray literature, many of which include examples that borrow data from the aftermath of the economic crisis that was manifested in 2008. The vast majority of those studies is focused on the economic cost-effectiveness or impact on transportation costs when using slow-steaming as a means of reducing marine fuel consumption. Moreover, a number of these studies were relying on modeling techniques, by using a limited number of ships and associated routes to determine the effects of slow-steaming. A reasonable degree of agreement emerged from the literature that a reduction in transportation costs results from a reduction in speed, being attributed primarily to reduced fuel costs, with which it is associated. Other cost-increasing factors, such as vessel operating costs, had a less dominant effect. The literature often pointed out that the cost reduction resulting from the application of slow-steaming was unevenly distributed among maritime stakeholders. Shipping companies were the main beneficiaries of significant cost savings, but these "savings" were not always passed on to shippers.

Edmund Y. Wu, Danny C. K. Ho, Stephen C. H. Ng et al.

Abstract The Greater Bay Area (GBA) is to become a major innovation and technology hub of global impact. Such a transformation is to take place in the midst of a policy-driven economy in GBA’s Mainland region and a market-driven economy in Hong Kong and Macau. In this paper, we examine the uniqueness and complexities of logistics and trade facilitation in GBA. This study establishes a discourse in GBA’s logistics and trade facilitation between government and non-government stakeholders. Based on the discourse, we provide a conceptual context on the unique aspects of GBA, pinpointing critical issues such as the coexistence of differing institutional systems and interplay between state planning and market economy. A major objective of the paper is to identify and conceptualize unique logistics and trade features of GBA development, and to highlight opportunities for academic and policy research.

Bruno Mazorra

In the realm of cost-sharing mechanisms, the vulnerability to Sybil strategies -- also known as false-name strategies, where agents create fake identities to manipulate outcomes -- has not yet been studied. In this paper, we delve into the details of different cost-sharing mechanisms proposed in the literature, highlighting their non-Sybil-resistant nature. Furthermore, we prove no deterministic, anonymous, truthful, Sybil-proof, upper semicontinuous, and individually rational cost-sharing mechanism for public excludable goods is better than $Ω(n)$-approximate. This finding reveals an exponential increase in the worst-case social cost in environments where agents are restricted from using Sybil strategies. To circumvent these negative results, we introduce the concept of \textit{Sybil Welfare Invariant} mechanisms, where a mechanism does not decrease its welfare under Sybil strategies when agents choose weak dominant strategies and have subjective prior beliefs over other players' actions. Finally, we prove that the Shapley value mechanism for symmetric and submodular cost functions holds this property, and so deduce that the worst-case social cost of this mechanism is the $n$th harmonic number $\mathcal H_n$ under equilibrium with Sybil strategies, matching the worst-case social cost bound for cost-sharing mechanisms. This finding suggests that any group of agents, each with private valuations, can fund public excludable goods both permissionless and anonymously, achieving efficiency comparable to that of non-anonymous domains, even when the total number of participants is unknown.ess and anonymously, achieving efficiency comparable to that of permissioned and non-anonymous domains, even when the total number of participants is unknown.

Sven Schewe, Qiyi Tang

Good-for-MDPs and good-for-games automata are two recent classes of nondeterministic automata that reside between general nondeterministic and deterministic automata. Deterministic automata are good-for-games, and good-for-games automata are good-for-MDPs, but not vice versa. One of the question this raises is how these classes relate in terms of succinctness. Good-for-games automata are known to be exponentially more succinct than deterministic automata, but the gap between good-for-MDPs and good-for-games automata as well as the gap between ordinary nondeterministic automata and those that are good-for-MDPs have been open. We establish that these gaps are exponential, and sharpen this result by showing that the latter gap remains exponential when restricting the nondeterministic automata to separating safety or unambiguous reachability automata.

Chowdhury Mohammad Sakib Anwar, Konstantinos Georgalos

Gallice and Monzón (2019) present a natural environment that sustains full co-operation in one-shot social dilemmas among a finite number of self-interested agents. They demonstrate that in a sequential public goods game, where agents lack knowledge of their position in the sequence but can observe some predecessors' actions, full contribution emerges in equilibrium due to agents' incentive to induce potential successors to follow suit. In this study, we aim to test the theoretical predictions of this model through an economic experiment. We conducted three treatments, varying the amount of information about past actions that a subject can observe, as well as their positional awareness. Through rigorous structural econometric analysis, we found that approximately 25% of the subjects behaved in line with the theoretical predictions. However, we also observed the presence of alternative behavioural types among the remaining subjects. The majority were classified as conditional co-operators, showing a willingness to cooperate based on others' actions. Some subjects exhibited altruistic tendencies, while only a small minority engaged in free-riding behaviour.

Haider J, Sanchez Rodrigues V, Pettit SJ et al.

This paper provides an empirical study of combined land - ocean transport within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The analysis is based on primary data in each transport activity taking place between Yiwu and Madrid. Five scenarios are modelled using alternative transport routes. Optimal choices for multi-modal transport combinations with regards to both economic and environmental perspectives are identified. By investigating freight transport from Yiwu to Madrid using the Yixinou line, the results suggest that the BRI has significant potential to reduce the cost of freight transport from China to Europe.

Leila L. Goedhals-Gerber, Savia Fedeli, Frances E. van Dyk

Background: A major concern plaguing South African pome fruit exporters is the volume of fruit going to waste during the export process. The senescence of fruits and the deterioration in its quality are accelerated by an increase in temperature. Thus, the first step in ultimately extending the shelf life of exported pome fruit and decreasing the risk of rejections is to ensure constant temperature control. Objectives: The study investigated the severity of temperature protocol deviations within the apple and pear export cold chains from the Western Cape, South Africa to the Netherlands. The study was undertaken in 2018 for Company X, an international fruit exporting firm, to improve the efficiency of its cold chains. Method: The research conducted temperature trials starting as close to the farm as possible and concluding as close to the end consumer as possible. Pulp and ambient temperature probes were inserted into and around the fruit to monitor export temperature profiles. Results: Firstly, the trial results show that non-compliance with temperature protocols occurred more often along the pome fruit export cold chain than initially anticipated. Secondly, the position within the pallet where the temperature breaks occurred highlighted an issue of heat retention resulting from unintentional oversights early in the cold chain. The study also identified areas of possible improvements where management could mitigate senescence factors. Conclusion: The study concluded that the efficient and effective functioning of a cold chain depends on cumulative efforts by all the supply chain partners rather than on the efforts of a single partner.

Ankush Chopra, Mahima Arora, Shubham Pandey

Millions of packages are delivered successfully by online and local retail stores across the world every day. The proper delivery of packages is needed to ensure high customer satisfaction and repeat purchases. These deliveries suffer various problems despite the best efforts from the stores. These issues happen not only due to the large volume and high demand for low turnaround time but also due to mechanical operations and natural factors. These issues range from receiving wrong items in the package to delayed shipment to damaged packages because of mishandling during transportation. Finding solutions to various delivery issues faced by both sending and receiving parties plays a vital role in increasing the efficiency of the entire process. This paper shows how to find these issues using customer feedback from the text comments and uploaded images. We used transfer learning for both Text and Image models to minimize the demand for thousands of labeled examples. The results show that the model can find different issues. Furthermore, it can also be used for tasks like bottleneck identification, process improvement, automating refunds, etc. Compared with the existing process, the ensemble of text and image models proposed in this paper ensures the identification of several types of delivery issues, which is more suitable for the real-life scenarios of delivery of items in retail businesses. This method can supply a new idea of issue detection for the delivery of packages in similar industries.

Robert R. Tucci

We propose a Goodness of Causal Fit (GCF) measure which depends on Judea Pearl's ``do" interventions. This is different from Goodness of Fit (GF) measures, which do not use interventions. Given a set ${\cal G}$ of DAGs with the same nodes, to find a good $G\in {\cal G}$, we propose plotting $GCF(G)$ versus $GF(G)$ for all $G\in {\cal G}$, and finding a graph $G\in {\cal G}$ with a large amount of both types of goodness.

Manuel Patchou, Benjamin Sliwa, Christian Wietfeld

The integration of small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) will empower novel smart-city applications and services. After the unforeseen outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public demand for delivery services has multiplied. Mobile robotic systems inherently offer the potential for minimizing the amount of direct human-to-human interactions with the parcel delivery process. The proposed system-of-systems consists of various complex aspects such as assigning and distributing delivery jobs, establishing and maintaining reliable communication links between the vehicles, as well as path planning and mobility control. In this paper, we apply a system-level perspective for identifying key challenges and promising solution approaches for modeling, analysis, and optimization of UAV-aided parcel delivery. We present a system-of-systems model for UAV-assisted parcel delivery to cope with higher capacity requirements induced by the COVID-19. To demonstrate the benefits of hybrid vehicular delivery, we present a case study focusing on the prioritization of time-critical deliveries such as medical goods. The results further confirm that the capacity of traditional delivery fleets can be upgraded with drone usage. Furthermore, we observe that the delay incurred by prioritizing time-critical deliveries can be compensated with drone deployment. Finally, centralized and decentralized communication approaches for data transmission inside hybrid delivery fleets are compared.

K. A. G. Araujo, E. G. Birgin, M. S. Kawamura et al.

This paper addresses an integrated lot-sizing and scheduling problem in the industry of consumer goods for personal care, a very competitive market in which the good customer service level and the cost management show up in the competition for the clients. In this research, a complex operational environment composed of unrelated parallel machines with limited production capacity and sequence-dependent setup times and costs is studied. There is also a limited finished-goods storage capacity, a characteristic not found in the literature. Backordering is allowed but it is extremely undesirable. The problem is described through a mixed integer linear programming formulation. Since the problem is NP-hard, relax-and-fix heuristics with hybrid partitioning strategies are investigated. Computational experiments with randomly generated and also with real-world instances are presented. The results show the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed approaches. Compared to current solutions used by the company, the best proposed strategies yield results with substantially lower costs, primarily from the reduction in inventory levels and better allocation of production batches on the machines.

Logan H. Jones, Amy J. Barger, Lennox L. Cowie

We use the wealth of deep archival optical spectroscopy on the GOODS-South field from Keck, the VLT, and other facilities to select candidate high-redshift Lyman continuum (LyC) leakers in the Hubble Deep UV Legacy Survey (HDUV) dataset. We select sources at $2.35 < z < 3.05$, where the HST/WFC3 F275W filter probes only the redshifted LyC. We find five moderately F275W-bright sources (four detected at $\gtrsim3σ$ significance) in this redshift range. However, two of these show evidence in their optical spectra for contamination by foreground galaxies along the line-of-sight. We then perform an F275W error-weighted sum of the fluxes of all 129 galaxies at $2.35 < z < 3.05$ in both the GOODS-N and GOODS-S HDUV areas to estimate the total ionizing flux. The result is dominated by just five candidate F275W-bright LyC sources. Lastly, we examine the contributions to the metagalactic ionizing background, finding that, at the sensitivity of the HDUV F275W data and allowing for the effects of LyC transmission in the intergalactic medium (IGM), star-forming galaxies can match the UV flux required to maintain an ionized IGM at $z \sim 2.5$.