Before I even had a chance to glance at our most recent issue of Forbes, my husband called out to me saying that there was an interesting article in it on Calculus for Truckers. As soon as he noted the title, I responded that I bet that the article was featuring research by Professor Warren Powell of Princeton University, and I was right!
The feature article arrived with perfect timing for my Transportation & Logistics course that I will start teaching next week and it is a great read.
As Warren (I will use his first name since he has been a fellow colleague through INFORMS and various Society of Transportation & Logistics activities for a long time) notes in the article, the research of his that Schneider National has been using, dates back to the 1980s. He has also worked with yellow Freight and other major logistics providers.
According to the Forbes article:
What interested Schneider, a full-truckload carrier, was Powell's work in the field of approximate dynamic programming, which is a way to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty. Schneider needed a model that could take into account the nonobvious and sometimes random variables that affect the efficiency of thousands of drivers over weeks of time and at a high level of detail.
It is fantastic that more and more industries are realizing the importance of analytics, coupled with algorithms and simulation, to enable the exploration of policy changes on the entire system.
"The thing that's so powerful is that when someone presses us on the impact of different policy changes, we have the facts, we have the data. We can produce reports and analysis so that if someone else brought in their scientists, they would have to agree," said Ted Gifford of Schneider. "The value is to be able to take these complex business opportunities and give them a good, solid analysis."
It is certainly a fantastic time to be working in analytics and operations research!
Thanks also to Forbes for such great coverage of research that is making such a difference in practice!
Hopefully, the success of such research will enable additional applications of analytics / operations research to various industries at a quickened pace.
Showing posts with label trucking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trucking. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Worst Traffic Jam Ever -- 10 Days and 60 Miles!
I am getting ready to teach two courses this Fall, including my Transportation & Logistics course, to which I always bring material and news items from the real-world.
Just in time for my first class, is the news, as both The Guardian and The New York Times report, of what is being reported as the worst traffic jam ever, which occurred on a highway west of Beijing, which is part of the Beijing-Tibet highway, and lasted 10 days and 60 miles! The drivers behaved quite well during this logjam and you can view some of the photos of the gridlock here.
One of the reasons for this surreal traffic jam was that construction had started on this major thoroughfare, thus reducing its capacity. Plus, this is a major highway for the transportation not only of passenger vehicles but also of trucks carrying freight and especially coal.
Room for Debate in The New York Times has interesting takes on this mega traffic jam, with one debater stating that such a monumental traffic jam would never happen in the US. Interestingly, as well, many of the truck drivers in order to avoid tolls (and being weighed) would rather choose a longer route, as happened in this case, in China. Tolls in which there is the money vs. time issue is another topic that I will be teaching in my course.
In our Fragile Networks book we discuss how the transportation network design and the reduction of capacity can affect traffic flows, both major issues in the worst traffic jam ever. Also, we quantify the effects of enhancements of network capacity, such as the increase in road capacity. Clearly, to have effective transportation and logistics systems, one must construct the appropriate critical infrastructure, in the form of roads, bridges, and even rails, sea and air routes, to support the flows!
The subject of Transportation & Logistics is always fascinating!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Greening of Supply Chains and Earth Day
Today is Earth Day and there are many special celebrations going on to mark this day!
One of my passions is studying and analyzing supply chains in a holistic, system-wide way and finding ways in which supply chains can be made greener. Two aspects to this is to enhance the manufacturing links as well as the transportation links. As is well-known, today's supply chains are global in nature, so in order to reduce carbon imprints, and to assist in sustainability, one must capture all the supply chain network activities.
Interestingly, Louis Uchetelle writes in the New York Times that the Green Economy is Not Yet Made in U.S.A. (but we are working hard on this). The article quotes a colleague of mine at UMass Amherst, Dr. Robert Pollin, who has done studies for the administration estimating the impact and who is also optimistic: Clean energy is a huge opportunity to revive manufacturing. Last May, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Pollin, who spoke in our Speaker Series at the Isenberg School on "How Green Growth Can Revive the Economy," and he was simply terrific!
Another aspect of greening of supply chains is to minimize the emissions associated with transportation and a big issue is how to keep those trucks coming back, as filled as possible. Ken Belson, also writing for the Times, in the Business of Green, in his article, Keeping Trucks Full, Coming and Going, notes that: Deadhead trips, as they are known, are a waste of fuel, money and time, and a producer of greenhouse gases. The article notes a neat, new initiative, known as Empty Miles, which is a program that is the brainchild of the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association, or VICS, a nonprofit group that tries to make the supply chain in consumer goods industries more efficient. Macy's (one of my absolutely favorite retailers) and J. C. Penney have both signed on. The more companies that sign on, the more the trucks will not be traveling empty, improving the flow of freight, while reducing emissions -- a win-win situation, which is terrific!
Let's celebrate the beauty of our Earth today and revel in knowing that by being more efficient, we can actually be more green!
One of my passions is studying and analyzing supply chains in a holistic, system-wide way and finding ways in which supply chains can be made greener. Two aspects to this is to enhance the manufacturing links as well as the transportation links. As is well-known, today's supply chains are global in nature, so in order to reduce carbon imprints, and to assist in sustainability, one must capture all the supply chain network activities.
Interestingly, Louis Uchetelle writes in the New York Times that the Green Economy is Not Yet Made in U.S.A. (but we are working hard on this). The article quotes a colleague of mine at UMass Amherst, Dr. Robert Pollin, who has done studies for the administration estimating the impact and who is also optimistic: Clean energy is a huge opportunity to revive manufacturing. Last May, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Pollin, who spoke in our Speaker Series at the Isenberg School on "How Green Growth Can Revive the Economy," and he was simply terrific!
Another aspect of greening of supply chains is to minimize the emissions associated with transportation and a big issue is how to keep those trucks coming back, as filled as possible. Ken Belson, also writing for the Times, in the Business of Green, in his article, Keeping Trucks Full, Coming and Going, notes that: Deadhead trips, as they are known, are a waste of fuel, money and time, and a producer of greenhouse gases. The article notes a neat, new initiative, known as Empty Miles, which is a program that is the brainchild of the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association, or VICS, a nonprofit group that tries to make the supply chain in consumer goods industries more efficient. Macy's (one of my absolutely favorite retailers) and J. C. Penney have both signed on. The more companies that sign on, the more the trucks will not be traveling empty, improving the flow of freight, while reducing emissions -- a win-win situation, which is terrific!
Let's celebrate the beauty of our Earth today and revel in knowing that by being more efficient, we can actually be more green!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sustainable Supply Chain Networks and Design
The New York Times should be commended for publishing not one but two articles on sustainable supply chains and transportation in the same issue! Yesterday, in its Business Day section, The Times had an article, Clearing the Air at American Ports, written by Steven Greenhouse (appropriate name for this topic) and Wal-Mart Plans to Make its Supply Chain Greener by Stephanie Rosenbloom.
The former article discusses how the ports of LA and Long Beach are the single largest contributors to air pollution in the Los Angeles area, due to diesel pollution, and how a unique partnership, a labor-green alliance, is looking to prevent old trucks, which generate greater levels of emissions, from hauling cargo from the ports. The burden of replacing the older trucks with new trucks, which emit fewer emissions, is to be placed on the trucking companies, rather than on the individual truckers, many of whom, because of the large costs, are just barely eking out a living.
The article on Wal-Mart, in turn, emphasizes how Wal-Mart is working with suppliers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain to a tune of 20 million metric tons by 2015 (which would be equivalent to removing more than 3.8 million cars from roads for one year)! Suppliers are to examine the complete carbon lifecycle of their product -- from the manufacturing and use of raw materials through the recycling stage. Given Wal-Mart's clout and heft, as well as its growing emphasis on sustainability, such initiatives are proactive and timely (and also help to reduce energy costs).
We have been conducting research on sustainable supply chains and transportation for many years and have published articles (and even books) on such topics.
In 2007, I wrote the article, "Sustainable Supply Chain and Transportation Networks," with Dr. Zugang "Leo" Liu and Dr. Trisha Woolley, two of my former doctoral students, who are now, respectively, professors at Pennsylvania State University at Hazelton, and at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. This article, which appeared in the inaugural issue of the journal, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, is available for downloading for free from the journal's website.
Our article demonstrates how competition among decision-makers in supply chains, who are multicriteria decision-makers, and interested in reducing emissions, can be combined with collaboration across successive tiers of the supply chain. Hence, this framework allows for the determination of the ultimate supply chain network design for sustainability in the case of alliances and partnerships, as we have been reading more and more about in the press.
This article of ours is one in a series on sustainability, supply chain networks and transportation, which can be accessed on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks (please use Internet Explorer or update your Mozilla browser for downloading of pdf files from this site).
The former article discusses how the ports of LA and Long Beach are the single largest contributors to air pollution in the Los Angeles area, due to diesel pollution, and how a unique partnership, a labor-green alliance, is looking to prevent old trucks, which generate greater levels of emissions, from hauling cargo from the ports. The burden of replacing the older trucks with new trucks, which emit fewer emissions, is to be placed on the trucking companies, rather than on the individual truckers, many of whom, because of the large costs, are just barely eking out a living.
The article on Wal-Mart, in turn, emphasizes how Wal-Mart is working with suppliers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain to a tune of 20 million metric tons by 2015 (which would be equivalent to removing more than 3.8 million cars from roads for one year)! Suppliers are to examine the complete carbon lifecycle of their product -- from the manufacturing and use of raw materials through the recycling stage. Given Wal-Mart's clout and heft, as well as its growing emphasis on sustainability, such initiatives are proactive and timely (and also help to reduce energy costs).
We have been conducting research on sustainable supply chains and transportation for many years and have published articles (and even books) on such topics.
In 2007, I wrote the article, "Sustainable Supply Chain and Transportation Networks," with Dr. Zugang "Leo" Liu and Dr. Trisha Woolley, two of my former doctoral students, who are now, respectively, professors at Pennsylvania State University at Hazelton, and at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. This article, which appeared in the inaugural issue of the journal, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, is available for downloading for free from the journal's website.
Our article demonstrates how competition among decision-makers in supply chains, who are multicriteria decision-makers, and interested in reducing emissions, can be combined with collaboration across successive tiers of the supply chain. Hence, this framework allows for the determination of the ultimate supply chain network design for sustainability in the case of alliances and partnerships, as we have been reading more and more about in the press.
This article of ours is one in a series on sustainability, supply chain networks and transportation, which can be accessed on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks (please use Internet Explorer or update your Mozilla browser for downloading of pdf files from this site).
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