Mpm Maarten Hendriks

Simultaneous berth allocation and yard planning at tactical level

We present a simultaneous berth allocation and yard planning problem at tactical level, since the berth allocation has a great impact on the yard planning and vice versa. This problem is solved by means of an alternating berth and yard planning heuristic approach. The alternating heuristic quickly converges to a local minimum which heavily depends on the starting point. Therefore, we formulate another optimization problem for generating a suitable starting point. A real size case study provided by PSA Antwerp shows that our approach to simultaneously solve both problems might reduce the total straddle carrier travel distance considerably as compared with a representative allocation.

Structural Properties of Third-Party Logistics Networks

A third party logistic provider operates a distribution network with minimal control over supply and demand. The operation is characterized by three levels: a strategic level that includes the location and sizing of warehouses, a tactical level that determines the links between customers, warehouses and producers and an operational level that determines the size of the flows through the links at any given time. An algorithm to optimize the operational level is determined for a given network structure. Starting with a fully connected network a reduced network is found by deleting the least used links until the operational costs increase dramatically. The topological structures of the reduced network as a function of backlog and transportation costs are determined.

Design of robust distribution networks run by third party logistics service providers

We consider a third party logistics service provider (LSP), who faces the problem of distributing different products from suppliers to consumers having no control on supply and demand. In a third party set-up, the operations of transport and storage are run as a black box for a fixed price. Thus the incentive for an LSP is to reduce its operational costs. The objective of this paper is to find an efficient network topology on a tactical level, which still satisfies the service level agreements on the operational level. We develop an optimization method, which constructs a tactical network topology based on the operational decisions resulting from a given model predictive control (MPC) policy. Experiments suggest that such a topology typically requires only a small fraction of all possible links. As expected, the found topology is sensitive to changes in supply and demand averages. Interestingly, the found topology appears to be robust to changes in second order moments of supply and demand distributions.